Love is a beautiful thing. It makes the world go round. It makes time stand still. Love is this, love is the other. You must have heard all these and more on the subject of love, especially the romantic kind.
Doesn’t everyone seem to be looking for that anyway? It has almost been bumped up the hierarchy of needs to self-actualization. You find that special person, you are the hero of the day. It is therefore no wonder that so much intrigue surrounds romantic movies.
Children will dismiss them as mushy, sappy, weepy disgust-inducing movies. What with all the petting and smooching that goes on in them?
What is the definitive feature of a good romantic movie?
Tears. Hands down. There are lots of tears involved in the watching of a romantic movie. Why can’t those two just be honest about their feelings and get together? Not to forget the coincidences.
- He arrives right after she has left.
- She gives up just when he is ready to commit.
- He gets off the bus just when he gets onto another to go find her.
- He is rushing to tell her how he feels when she has an accident and goes into a coma. When she wakes up, she cannot remember anything. Including him!
Watching a good romantic movie can be a teeth-gritting affair. It also elicits feelings of nostalgia. If there is a great love that you lost or that passed on, that is bound to come up in the course of watching a good romantic movie.
Classical romantic movies
These ones seem to run along the same theme; boy meets girl or vice versa, and she is nothing like the girls he is used to.
- The ones he knows are taught that red hair is an abomination and acceptable hair has to be This one who catches his eye and his heart has a riot of red curls and she couldn’t be bothered with proper dressing or speech.
- She rides a horse astride to the consternation of everyone and actually laughs out loud!
She is a ‘disgrace’ and he is completely under her spell.
Contemporary romance
This one seems to embrace the modern working woman. You will find the love interests going out to work and sharing the chores at home. That is after they have gone through all the hurdles of coincidences and jealous crushes trying tokeep them apart.
Some of the best romances are those that either end in tragedy with one of the lovers dying; if not both of them. These ones will have you bawling your eyes out and blowing your nose into the tissue. Then there are those that have so many hurdles to get over. You wonder if it is humanly possible to have that much patience.
Romance genres are great entertainment and may have lessons in perseverance to pass across. but the best romantic movies are those that leave you reaching for your tissues and dabbing at your eyes as you sigh dramatically and wonder why love has so many next to impossible tests.
