Isn't It Romantic: The Middle Path

The romantic comedy fascinates me.

Mostly because I kept hearing that Annie Hall was a really good movie back in '07-'08, I took a gander at it and fell in love with the idea of watching two people fall in love with some jokes thrown in. Quite a few of the canonized comedies of the past 100 years of cinema have been romantic comedies or have romance elements thrown in - i.e. a good deal of Charlie Chaplin's work tends to have rom-com elements to it, with most historians naming 1931's City Lights as the first modern rom-com. I think a lot of why Chaplin is so fascinated with cinematic love is not just because he utterly sucked at real-life romantic pursuits - always jumping into a different woman every time he thinks of a movie idea, for example - but because he loved to pile on the schmaltz in all of his films. He used the extremes of drama and comedy to make you relate to his characters - for example, a factory isn't just a factory but instead a haphazard death trap. Similarly, Adenoid Hynkel isn't just a demagogue dictator whose words are sweet nothings meant to make bigots feel good about themselves, but a gibberish-ranting Hitler expy who is so full of hot air that he bends his microphone over with just his ranting.

However, Chaplin realized early on that in order to convey very specific points, especially in the hybrid genre of the comedy-drama (or dramedy), you had to stick to one ethos or the other. The factory can't be straight out of the nightmarish pages of Upton Sinclair's highly underrated tragedy/socialist call-to-arms The Jungle, but a cartoonish cluster of gears and conveyor belts in the style of a cartoon straight from the whacked-out minds at Termite Terrace - because the Tramp is involved in scenes regarding the factory. Similarly, Hynkel can't carry out the incredibly monstrous actions Hitler pulled off in Germany during his reign, but instead be a guy who segregates Jews and makes them even poorer while playing around with his balloon globe - because not only did Chaplin not know of the horrors happening in Germany at the time, but because most people - even those who knew of his anti-Semitism and fought against it - were convinced that Hitler was a great orator. Serious scenes - the Barber's speech to the citizens of Tomainia; the "yes, I can see" scene in City Lights - cannot be played for comedic effect because, like how comedic scenes have to stay comedic, it would undercut the effect. When the Barber tells Hannah to look up to the skies to see the dawn of a new day - a free Tomainia - it'd be stupid to put in a clown pulling pratfalls because it'd cheapen that entire scene.

Granted comedy has evolved since then, with the development of cinematic black comedy blurring the lines between the serious and the flippant (i.e. the apocalypse being set to relatively upbeat pop songs, such as "I Started a Joke" in Penn and Teller Get Killed and "We'll Meet Again" in Dr. Strangelove; the uncomfortable mixture of joke and melodrama in Sunset Boulevard and A Face in the Crowd), so the Chaplin Formula with its heightened emotions during both comedic and dramatic scenes has become more or less become passé. However, the romantic comedy still adheres to said mechanics - mostly because they just work. The romantic comedies of the absurdly problematic Woody Allen use those traditionally - ever notice how the serious moments in Annie Hall feel separate from the comedic moments? Allen has to take breathers between Annie and Alvy having their disagreement in Los Angeles and Alvy acting like an idiot to a police officer. He cannot make Annie fighting Alvy funny...

...but he can give a sense of drama to Alvy fighting the cop. Allen's development is to make the comedic moment have a sense of urgency based on what came before it - if a break-up just occurred, wouldn't it be likely that the character still carries the baggage of what just happened? Alvy isn't just a quipster mouthing off to one of Edward M. Davis' best, but a broken man who just experienced his own worst nightmare, emotionally regressing to that kid playing bumper cars, trying so hard to keep a stiff upper lip. It's implied that after Alvy was arrested and sent to county lock-up, he cried. He did the same thing that he did to everybody else - he let his own biases and preferences get the best of him. His funny moments are super-bitersweet during this period of the film - like he's still trying to cycle through the finality of his and Annie's break-up. And that's what helps elevate the film from "old rom-com made by an alleged pedophile" to "great rom-com made by an alleged pedophile that I'll buy at Goodwill or torrent" - the fact that the funny moments, especially those followed after serious moments, have legitimate emotional weight to them.

Isn't It Romantic, the new comedy starring Rebel Wilson of Pitch Perfect fame, takes this by heart, but applies it to the broad strokes of the parody format. And for that, while it does take a while to get going and isn't the strongest commentary on rom-coms (Nora Ephron's work, long considered traditional rom-com standards, does roughly the same thing as Isn't It Romantic does, even down to the acerbic sarcasm from the leads), it's imbued with a sense of pathos that helps elevate the film to beyond "funny parody film with Fat Amy doing funny fat girl fall-down jokes." You'd need a sense of pathos to help communicate the ideas that the film is trying to get across, but you also need a strong sense of humor to make people realize just how screwed-up a lot of rom-com tropes are.

The set-up of the film is this: Natalie, an architect who feels like life doesn't appreciate her and allows herself to be used as a doormat by everybody, argues with her assistant about the mechanics of romantic comedies - how they're always perfect, how they use the same character archetypes (the klutzy female lead, the handsome co-leads, the workplace enemy, the sassy gay neighbor, the best friend who gets shoved to the wayside), how the characters are mostly white (except for a few exotic persons), etc. On her way home, she gets mugged by a subway passenger on her way to attempt a meet-cute - after knocking him out, she runs into a support beat and knocks herself out...

...only to find herself in a romantic comedy. Not the ones she grew up watching, but the ones her assistant watches instead of doing her job - full of perfect set design, a New York City that looks every bit as romantic as the poster from Manhattan (and is almost like another character, to quote David Wain's similar parody They Came Together, a superb film in of itself), and where all of her friends and neighbors have remolded themselves into rom-com archetypes. Her assistant, who she was on terms with, is now a person who absolutely abhors her. Her neighbor is now a sassy gay friend who assists with clothing montages. The only person who's unchanged is best friend Josh, who falls in love with Isabella, a model from a Pantene billboard who's now a yoga ambassador in this strict PG-13 universe.

Isn't It Romantic excels in distilling the post-Allen/Ephron romantic comedy into its own colorful nightmare - a place where love is expected at all times, where love-at-first-sight is The Rule, and where the ideal is the real. Natalie, rather than living in a homely-but-average apartment in a very diverse neighborhood, now resides in an absurdly-spacious mini-home in the whitest neighborhood possible, right down to the endless Magnolia Bakery knockoffs, that one ice cream store that's in every New York-set rom-com (even the Allen ones), and the awesome-but-impractical IKEA furniture that would make people appreciate Rob Liefeld's pouch fetish and the plainness of Brutalist architecture...before realizing that you wouldn't mind having those halved-marble swivel chairs in Natalie's rom-com workplace.

The thing that separates Isn't It Romantic from other movies of its caliber is how it feels more like a love letter to rom-coms. Granted They Came Together, when Harry met Sally..., and Annie Hall all have their moments of love for contrived romance and all those meet-cutes, but they feel like they have to either relentlessly mock the genre to the point of making it too ridiculous or they come to the conclusion that "love is overrated, but we get why it's there." With Isn't It Romantic, it's obvious just from the start that writers Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman have this undying love for the genre. And it's a breath of fresh air to boot - too many critiques of the genre have been needlessly harsh on it. In this writer's opinion, the hatred aimed towards the lock-stock-and-barrel romantic comedy reminds me of the intense hate a little band known as Greta Van Fleet gets on the regular from Internet music aficionados - like the existence of a mediocre Matthew McConaughey rom-com somehow cheapens film when, in reality, it set the stage for the actor to act in undoubtedly amazing work such as Interstellar and Kubo and the Two Strings. Similarly, apparently the reality of Greta Van Fleet sticking to the Zeppelin-tribute-band shtick somehow cheapens rock even though there's more interesting rock acts out there via the Internet (myself included) and through established indie labels (if you're willing to listen to the music of Not-A-Nice-Guy-at-All Michael Gira) - and it's more than likely that, thanks to the growing self-awareness of GvF and the middling-to-negative reception to Anthem of the Peaceful Army, the Kiszka brothers will change things up a lot for their upcoming release while sticking to the Zeppelin aesthetic.

What I'm trying to say is that romantic comedies are not your enemy. Neither are superhero movies. Neither is M. Night Shyamalan - hell, Orson Welles talks about how misunderstood he is by the elites and nobody bats an eye. But that's another story. The main point is that Isn't It Romantic has a love for the genre that a lot of the highly-praised meta rom-coms don't possess too much of. It quite enjoys the fantastical vacations, the extravagant modes of transportation, the parties at the Hamptons, the big bold statements of love at the end of every one of those movies...but like the meta rom-coms that came before - the intensely sarcastic parody of They Came Together, the free-flowing narrative of Annie Hall, the massive-timeline-distilled-into-bite-sized-scenes budding friendship of Billy Crystal and that woman who gets her rocks off by eating a really good turkey sandwich of when Harry met Sally... - just because it's a love letter to the genre doesn't mean it has legitimate qualms with the more problematic elements of rom-coms, namely the gay best-friend/neighbor, the lead woman being a klutz, and the insistence of cleaning up reality because the idea is to sell you something, not to depict what's actually happening. The over-reliance on these tropes has this effect of cheapening reality to where people come out assuming that their gay friends are gonna have all the hot dating advice and fashion tips - and thinking that New York City is as white as 27 Dresses. Where's the rom-coms for the working class, the proletariat? Where's that embrace of grit that was prevalent in Allen's best work? You know that you can take that from him since even he's embraced cleaning up his cinematic New York in his latter-day fare - and I'm not too keen on seeing his newest films thanks to his inability to take a step back, calm down, and not rant like Studebacher Hoch trying to get a mountain to attend a human-sized draft physical every time Dylan Farrow reminds people that, in her mind's eye, he is A Pretty Bad Person. 

Josh is right when he talks to Natalie about impossible love being possible in the real world. His entire character pretty much sums up that angle of the film...but what about the angle of Natalie realizing that she has to love herself and stand up for herself in order to escape the romantic comedy reality? How does that tie in to the film? It's what I thought to myself when I saw the film yesterday, but did the film really build it up?

Yeah. Natalie does become more and more confident in herself in the romantic comedy reality, doing the things that she claimed she would never do. She even embraces love-at-first-sight at times, especially with hunk Blake, who's a bit more secretive than he lets on (but ultimately really, really stupid). In effect, she's taking the "fine, I might as well do it" advice she received on the train via the one thing that I felt like was funny for personal reasons. This advice was delivered via a GIF of Lindsay Ellis having hot dogs thrown at her face during the intro to her and Kyle Kallgren's review of Freddy Got Fingered. I'm not making this up - the hot-dog lady GIF was in there. Lindsay Ellis is in an actual Hollywood movie that was shown in my hometown in GIF form. I cannot wait for a ContraPoints video to be shown on some person's computer in a big Hollywood blockbuster - I too want to see the "are you a man or woman? no, I feel like shit" meme in Avengers: Endgame. You know, for that added edginess. I mean, kids wouldn't go out of their way to see Contra cover her entire bodiss with Avon cologna milk. They'd do it with Olly Thorn and his endless bottle of HP Sauce, though. Spoiled brats.

At the end of the day, Isn't It Romantic advocates for a middle path. Not exactly a new thing, but it's refreshing in discourse surrounding romantic comedies. You can have your ideal New Yorks and all your tropes, but remember: people in reality might want to follow your advice. And you have to show the reality of any given situation. Who knows? Maybe stories will become interesting on their own regards. I mean, that's what happened to Natalie - her reality did indeed have the quirkiness of a rom-com, so the film might as well give her a musical number. And what better way to show that since she loves herself, why not reward her with the opportunity to sing "Express Yourself"?

B+

Side note: So I worked BG during Pitch Perfect 3. The days I worked were these big concert scenes - food was terrible, but the pay was pretty good. Got to wear what I wanted. Hung out with my friends. Got to listen to some pretty cool musical numbers. On the final day of shooting the final musical number - "Freedom '90," I think it was - Rebel and Anna Kendrick were talking to the audience, taking questions from the 500 of us that were there. Somebody - I think it was my friend Edgar - asked about upcoming projects for the both of them. The reason why I'm putting this story in there is because I first heard about Isn't It Romantic from Rebel answering the question. She said that she was filming a romantic comedy parody in about a month from wrap - one with Liam Hemsworth and Adam DeVine, or as she put it, "a movie where Bumper and I fall in love." This didn't occur to me until I saw the film - and I realized, "Wait, Rebel talked about this at the Q&A session."

So, uh, Rebel Wilson told me to see this film. Not really - she told like 500 other people - but still.