5 Classic Romantic Comedies That Teach Questionable Lessons

Sure, at one point, Sandra's character gets fed up and gives her two week's notice (that's the title of the movie!!), to which Hugh responds reasonably by telling all of the local legal firms to not hire her. It's an "If I can't have you, no one else can" deal, and he manages to somehow make it grosser when he agrees to let her go as long as she finds a qualified (read: HOT, FEMALE) lawyer to replace her.

After Hugh eye-fucks and approves of her choice, he's playing strip poker with the new girl in no time, and Sandra's reaction is ... jealousy? Yep, she's not angry about Hugh continuing to use his position to get sex from employees, but because he's not playing strip poker with her. Watching him hit on the new baby-faced lawyer makes Sandra realize she wants what every chief legal council apparently wants: to screw her creepy boss.

Aside from a heartwarming scene wherein Hugh Grant suggests that Sandra take a shit in his BMW during rush hour, this movie is a pre-#metoo fever dream. It tells us that sexual harassment is to be expected -- nay, desired -- and that the immature weirdo who makes you perform unpaid emotional labor at 1 in the morning is actually your true love.

This is played as if it's boldly progressive, but the central joke is Hal attempting to woo and flirt with "ugly" women as if they were hot. Get it? He's being nice to them because he thinks they're pretty, but they're not. Who says that writers of gross-out comedies can't also teach us to be better people?

The movie bravely critiques a culture that mocks any body that doesn't fit into an insanely narrow definition of beauty by itself mocking any body that doesn't fit into an insanely narrow definition of beauty. Fat women are always the punchline, with the movie reveling in all the broken chairs and cankle jokes that entails. Gwyneth Paltrow also dons a fat suit (when portraying how she "really" looks) to teach us a lesson about open-mindedness by pointing out how hilarious it would be if she looked like that. Also she eats half of a birthday cake in one bite, because fat people, am I right?

And so we're supposed to feel great about ourselves for rooting for Hal when he eventually deigns to see Paltrow as attractive despite her fat suit. His shallowness is cured, and the audience gets to laugh at plenty of jokes about big butts, because every bit hangs on the assumption that the audience is just as shallow as Hal, only without the desire to change. It's almost like the movie wants to moralize about stereotypes while simultaneously cashing in on them. And isn't that the true magic of Hollywood?

Related: 5 Romantic Comedy Gestures That Would Get You Slapped

Rachael learns of Freddie's schemes and dumps him, but of course, this genre can't allow the credits to roll there. Instead, Freddie's worst friend woos her and tries some non-consensual stuff on prom night. Compared to an unsuccessful rapist, Freddie suddenly seems like a prince, and when he shows up at her door later, she happily kisses him. Note that she's still fully in her post-makeover form here, and remains that way through the end.

But that's OK, because the guy also changed, in that he allowed himself to be attracted to an incredibly hot nerd whom he had modified to suit his own tastes.

Related: 5 Romantic Comedy Tropes That Would Be Creepy In Real Life

The films centers around Mary, a perfectly nice young woman who happens to be so hot that she drives every man she meets into temporary insanity. But despite some attempts to give her a personality-lite (She likes Harold & Maude! She has a job! She's, um, nice to others!), she's mostly free-spirited eye candy. The real emotional journey belongs to Ben Stiller's Ted, who famously zips up his junk on prom night, squandering his teenage hopes of some backseat finger-blasting before college.

Thirteen years later, Ted is still not over Mary, even though he hasn't seen her since his genital trauma. Ted sees this as a sign that his love is pure and not just the outgrowth of an unresolved issue surrounding his teenage sexuality. So he hires a private detective to find/stalk Mary. You know, like the villain of a movie would.

The detective immediately falls under Mary's spell, and before you know it, four different men of varying levels of sanity and emotional health are straight-up brawling over this lady. They demand to know which man she's into, because they clearly deem her incapable of dating around like a normal person. Eventually, the highly obedient Mary chooses Ted, because in the end, it turns out the obsessive stalker was right. They were meant to be together, and it was just a matter of the target coming around to the truth! Which, now that I think of it, brings to mind an oddly similar example ...

Hanks plays a hot widow whose eight-year-old son calls an advice radio talk show in hopes of finding his dad someone new. You know, the way kids do. Hanks talks to the radio host, and women everywhere swoon, but none so much as Meg Ryan, a journalist who writes him a love letter. In 2019, anonymously receiving a letter from a radio show listener usually means you've been doxxed by QAnon, but apparently this was still heartwarming in 1993.

As with any rom-com, both Meg and Tom have those "Plan B" partners whom we're supposed to hate. Except Sleepless In Seattle forgot that "supposed to hate" part, as Meg's boyfriend just has chronic allergies and Tom's girlfriend doesn't like camping. Those are two really reasonable human attributes to have, but the movie treats them as debilitating flaws that you dump someone over as soon as, and I can't stress this enough, you decide to pursue a complete stranger whom you briefly heard on a radio show.

After receiving a response from Hanks' third-grade son and, against all odds, believing that it's from Hanks himself, Meg flies out to Seattle to ... stare passionately at him? In one demonstrative moment, Meg watches from afar as father and son frolic on the beach. If you're thinking that minor changes in editing and score would turn this into a horror movie, someone already proved that years ago:

Ultimately, the three members of this star-crossed family unit meet atop the Empire State Building, and you just kind of assume that Tom Hanks lives happily ever after with a woman who stalked him based on virtually zero actual information. If there was a Sleepless In Seattle 2, it would just be Tom and Meg screaming over mortgage payments, because god forbid they get to know each other outside of disembodied radio voices and letters from grade-schoolers.

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