Romantic Comedy: Traditional Roles and Expectations

The most memorable examples of the genre thrive on creative combinations of these three elements: romantic, comedic, exploratory. Resort to cookie-cutter solutions to thematic and structural problems, and you get yet another flat specimen. Take the romance out or fail to infuse the story with laughter, and you end up with a different genre altogether.

Romantic comedies are required to strike a balance between expectation (the formula) and yearning (the fantasy). We all "know" that boy and girl will end up together, but we go to the movies to see what it is that makes a specific story special. We expect to go through the motions of meet-lose-get, but at the same time we hold our breath in anticipation of the unpredictable bumps on this particular ride. We want the same, but different.

How is that for a screenwriting standard?

To borrow the words of romantic hero William Thacker in Notting Hill, "surreal but nice".

A Genre Is Born

Romantic comedy was born of the gradually increasing role of romance in screwball comedy.

We find what is possibly the earliest terminological acknowledgment of the genre in the alternative title of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931), aka City Lights: A Comedy Romance in Pantomime.

Film historians hail the year 1934 as a turning point with the release of four comedies that feature strong and sensuous romantic conflict: Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, W.S. Van Dyke's The Thin Man, Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century, and Mark Sandrich's The Gay Divorcee. From then on, the love story ceases to be ancillary to the comedy and becomes itself the central plot that is enhanced by comedy.

During the '30s and '40s, romantic comedy invents itself and hits its stride. Archetypal characters and functions that we enjoy over and over again in modern examples of the genre, go back to those early experimentations. No matter what social theme or stylistic trend each era imposes on its films (e.g. the sexual sophistication of the '60s and '70s), these elements constitute a collective sine qua non for every romantic comedy ever made.

Basic Ingredients: Pheromones, Spunk, Unsuitable Suitors, Best Friends

It takes two (at least) to make a love story and it takes a love story to make a romantic comedy. The romantic couple is the star of the movie, as their trials and tribulations in the name of love dominate the story and the screen.

How do we like our romantic heroes and heroines? What physical and spiritual attributes do we look for? What factors trigger a gut feeling of character chemistry?

Although there are really no hard and fast rules when it comes to sexual attraction, there seem to be certain character traits that render romantic personages endearing to us and motivate us to root for them in the course of the movie.

Successful romantic comedies teach us that we tend to root for a romantic hero who is:

Smolderingly Sexy: Joe in Roman Holiday, Paul in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Paul in Barefoot in the Park, Edward in Pretty Woman, and... the Bard himself in Shakespeare in Love.
Endearingly Vulnerable: 'Bud' in The Apartment, Howard in What's Up, Doc?, Dave in Dave, Sam in Sleepless in Seattle, Ted in There's Something About Mary.
Self-Deprecatingly Funny: Sir Alfred in Unfaithfully Yours, Alvy in Annie Hall, Elliot in The Goodbye Girl, Harry in When Harry Met Sally, Charles in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
An SOB but Redeemable: Michael in Tootsie, Phil in Groundhog Day, Linus in Sabrina, Melvin in As Good as It Gets, Nick in What Women Want.

In much the same way, we expect a romantic heroine to be:

Smolderingly Sexy: Julie in Tootsie, Lee in Hannah and Her Sisters, Loretta in Moonstruck, Annie in Bull Durham, Tess in Working Girl.
Endearingly Vulnerable: Paula in The Goodbye Girl, Kate in French Kiss, Sabrina in Sabrina, Lucy in While You Were Sleeping, Dorothy in Jerry Maguire.
Gutsy and Feisty: 'Hildy' in His Girl Friday, Lucy in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Rita/Susan in Educating Rita, Carol in As Good as It Gets, Viola in Shakespeare in Love.

The above categories do not cover the vast range of character traits we encounter in romantic leads nor are they mutually exclusive. For example, the character of Charles (Hugh Grant) in Four Weddings and a Funeral combines humorous self-awareness with a childlike vulnerability, while his attitude to women and relationships seems to have earned him high points on the SOB scale. The character of Jean Harrington/Lady Eve (Barbara Stanwyck) in The Lady Eve may exude relentless sexuality, but she is also vulnerable when in love, and deeply hurt by her lover's priggishness and incapacity to believe and forgive. Moreover, while there is a lot to be said for conventional good looks, there is something just as irresistibly sexy in an incisive sense of humor, intelligence, self-confidence, and spiritual strength. Again, it is not a question of schematics but of a complex mixture of need, desire, and attraction. Just as in real life.

Traditional romantic comedy usually employs two auxiliary character functions that represent antagonistic and supportive forces to the love story. They are respectively the Antagonist (i.e. the significant but unsuitable other) and the Best Friend.

The Antagonist is not necessarily "a bad guy". More often than not, he is just an ordinary bloke: solid, solvent, and... dull. As a bonus he may be ridden with allergies (Walter in Sleepless in Seattle), have trouble mounting a horse (George in The Philadelphia Story), have an obnoxious mother (Bruce in His Girl Friday), or be a regular Joe Jinx (Collier in Pat and Mike). In the nastier range, male Antagonists can be cold-hearted (Jeff in The Apartment), or duplicitous (Ron in Tootsie). Female Antagonists are presented as treacherous (Cornelia in My Man Godfrey), stiflingly uptight (Alice in Bringing Up Baby), possessive (Tooley in Breakfast at Tiffany's), shrill and domineering (Eunice in What's Up, Doc?), narcissistic and manipulative (Katharine in Working Girl), or quite benevolent but not too bright (Noelle in The Truth About Cats & Dogs).

The Antagonist is an opposing force to the course of the central romance. S/he exists to obstruct the main love story, to pose challenges for the protagonists to overcome, and to highlight the itch that only the other half, the right half, can scratch. While obstacles are indispensable to a romantic comedy, Antagonists are not: They are not characters per se, but character functions that concretize the deeper problems that need to be faced for love to triumph. As a result, many romantic comedies break out of the "eternal triangle" mold and essentially assign the function of Antagonist to metaphorical antagonistic forces (e.g. fear of change in Nine Months, dutifulness in Roman Holiday, low self-esteem in The Goodbye Girl, the USSR in Ninotchka).

If the Antagonist is an opposing force, the Best Friend is a dependable supportive force. It is the sounding board for the protagonists' concerns, the sympathetic ear for when they need to vent, the friendly hand that passes the Kleenex.

Best Friends (mates, allies, pals) are always there. Literally. In a genre that needs to continuously slalom its way around static expository situations, Best Friends elicit background information, explore motivations, and move the story forward.

Best Friends usually have next to no character arcs. When they do, their transformation exists primarily to highlight some important aspect of the protagonists' characterization, predicament, or breakthrough, as well as underscore the thematic infrastructure of the story. (Shakespeare was well aware of the enhancing impact of this function when he chose none other than the sarcastic Enobarbus to drool over Queen Cleopatra's appeal in the "The barge she sat in..." speech.)

It may not measure up to Shakespeare, but Serendipity is a romantic comedy that takes a major risk: It picks the conceptof coincidence (aka the kiss of death for a screenplay) and turns it into a premise of predestination. The meet-lose-get pattern becomes an intellectual game, where the potential lovers follow clues that more often than not fall into their laps. Hard to buy and futile to pursue? This is exactly what Dean (Jeremy Piven) and Eve (Molly Shannon) think when they initially fulfill their Best Friend functions as reluctant helpers. By the end of the movie, however, they both endorse the protagonists' faith in destiny, especially Dean who becomes proactive in salvaging his relationship with the woman he loves. Through Dean and Eve we are invited to think: If thosetwo believe, then there must be something in that fate theory after all.

A naughty tweak of the Best Friend transformation angle is rendered through the character of Sean (Jeff Goldblum) in Nine Months. This Best Friend starts out as no help at all to the protagonist Samuel (Hugh Grant). Sean represents all that Samuel has a hard time giving up before he can advance to a more accepting and meaningful relationship with his girlfriend Rebecca (Julianne Moore). Sean's lifestyle stands for independence and a devil-may-care enjoyment of life's pleasures, i.e. everything that a married man with a baby is required to renounce. Instead of promoting Samuel's change, Sean inadvertently becomes an antagonistic force.

Then, all of a sudden, as Samuel is "in the middle of a nervous breakdown", not only is Sean supportive, but is also critical of his own life that he acknowledges as empty and meaningless. Could this really be Sean? Probably not, but his intervention points the hero to the right direction at a turning point in the story. A few weeks later, while Sean is talking to Samuel again, not only does he not recall his pearls of wisdom of just a few days ago, but he has reverted to his good old self as the advocate of "forget and move on". At this point, however, the hero has matured enough to take charge of his life and the Best Friend function provides little more than a comedic interval.

Only when Sean acts out of character does he fulfill the traditional Best Friend role of helper, supporter, and promoter of the love story. When he is true to character, he functions, at best, as a distractor from the central romantic interest. This twist makes the hero's growth even more worthy and worthwhile.