Romantic Comedies Just Aren’t Funny Anymore
Welcome to modern rom-com week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed! In honor of two big romance releases this week—The Fall Guy and The Idea of You—we’re celebrating everything we love about the last 15 years of romantic comedies.
Love isn’t particularly funny in the “ha ha” sense—unless the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “funny ha ha” is Nelson Muntz pointing and laughing at someone. But romantic comedies have long tried to prove otherwise, finding humor (I’d call it “gallows;” you might call it “light and frothy”) in what I’d argue is one of life’s more traumatic, if valuable, experiences. It’s a noble pursuit, making someone laugh in the face of horrible vulnerability and awkwardness. But that once-successful endeavor is becoming less and less so with every passing year.
Let me put it this way: Romantic comedies aren’t funny anymore.