5 rom-com cliches from Hollywood movies
Hollywood romantic comedies or rom-coms are like a warm blanket for the aching heart, or like the best playmate to cheer up the day. A beautiful love story at the center is sewn through a string of dreamy situations and candy-crushing sweet plot points. These match-making situations have now become cliches, some of which still work, while some need to retire. We list five.
The climactic airport/train scene
First up, there's the climactic airport or train scene, where a protagonist realizes they have to confess their feelings and stop their beloved from leaving. After all, there's nothing as thrilling as watching the protagonist buzzing past security and/or traffic to grab on to their elusive forever together. Movies like Love Actually and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days have popularized it.
The meet-cute
To fill you up, a meet-cute is a rom-com exclusive trope where the leading pair meet for the first time. Although completely random (and often under the garb of an accident), the meeting proves their union is meant to be. Like in Notting Hill, Hugh Grant's character spills his orange juice on Julia Roberts after bumping into her, thereby making a memorable first impression!
The forever single (usually female) lead
Rom-coms, especially of the 1990/early 2000s, had a way of projecting the heroine's being single as a pitiable thing. Either the female lead ended up as the eternal bridesmaid (27 Dresses) or pathetically pined over a disgusting person (The Holiday). While a girl can do both, the movies usually showed how a guy entering the picture corrects everything. That's a trope we can avoid.
Best friends to lovers syndrome
Our next entry is a two-sided sword. While watching two dear, dear friends fall in love is magical, this theme also perpetuates the notion that people of the opposite gender cannot be friends. Films like One Day or Love, Rosie, however, show us the complexities of developing feelings for a friend and how it all feels right after taking friendship to the next level.
The makeover
Rounding up, we have another regularly seen trope that needs to go extinct—the makeover montage. In some rom-coms, like Clueless, She's All That, a character is said to be invisible on the social ladder because of her wearing glasses and not caring about fashion trends. And, boom, a fluttery makeover ritual later, the very same person becomes the apple of everyone's eyes (sigh).
