Four weddings

With Thanksgiving in the rear-view mirror, holiday season madness that’s been on a low simmer for weeks finally reaches fever pitch. It kind of feels like the shame that accompanies getting too festive too early instantly falls away, and people start brazenly flying their holiday freak flag.

Maybe that explains why—on a Saturday night at the age of 50—I found myself watching Hallmark’s Christmas in Notting Hill, which meets all the criteria essential to the channel’s long-ridiculed slate of holiday movies. First, everyone wore an alarming amount of green and red clothing. Second, the plot was contrived and largely plagiarized (regular person meets celebrity, and they even had the lead male character spill a drink on the lead female character as the meet-cute, completing the Notting Hill heist). Third, the leads had zero chemistry. I mean, zero. Fourth, the outcome was never in doubt, despite half-hearted attempts to introduce some tension. Fifth, everything wrapped up so quickly I almost got whiplash sitting on the sofa.

Was it a good movie? Hell no—it was terrible. Did I watch it? Absolutely. Did it move me? Embarrassingly, yes: I welled up when the male lead—a professional footballer sidelined by injury—says he doesn’t want to retire because he’s afraid no longer playing will end the one thing that makes him feel close to his late father. So, the cat’s out of the bag: I’m a romantic comedy tragic, and a rom-com has to be truly subterranean quality for me to not watch and enjoy the ride.

Why I love rom-coms is easy: I’m just a sucker. My dad proposed to my mum the day they met and, when she entirely logically refused, he said, “Tell me when you’re ready then.” Four months later she did, and they were together for 45 years until he died almost a decade ago. So, there’s a solid love-at-first-sight bug, even if that neatly glosses over the hard, painful periods that accompany any relationship of any significant length.

But I will always believe in the transformative power of love, even if it’s taken me a long time to learn Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s sage advice that it “does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” I just happen to think there’s something wonderful about feeling deeply for other people, not to mention it’s nice to be able to turn to someone you love when something amazing happens and say, “Did you see that?”

As for what makes a good rom-com, I’d note one thing up front: the fact so few are truly great tells you just how hard it is for all the elements to come together. For every When Harry Met Sally, there’s a dozen 27 Dresses and about fifty My Life in Ruins. But I’d also note rom-coms are one movie genre where the attitude of us regular viewers is often very different to critics. For instance, while My Life In Ruins rates a measly 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience rating is 44%. Looks like a lot of viewers are suckers just like me.

Now, there are great rom-coms: a Vanity Fair list earlier this year put When Harry Met Sally on top, followed by You’ve Got Mail, Clueless, and Bridget Jones’ Diary (with solid ratings for films like Groundhog Day, Broadcast News, Sleepless in Seattle, and Roman Holiday). My personal favorite came in at number 11 (more on that in a sec), and there’s a back story here.

Almost 30 years ago (!) in 1994, my mate Brett and I boarded a flight to Los Angeles three days after my 21st birthday to begin the classic Aussie coming-of-age backpacking trip. A few weeks and a few cities later, I was alone in a dark theater near our youth hostel in New York City’s Chelsea district, munching popcorn to catch Four Weddings and a Funeral and its unknown lead actor who was generating lots of buzz, a certain Hugh Grant.

Four Weddings was, for me, a revelation. I remember a few things distinctly. God, I envied the characters and their friendship—I immediately questioned why I wasn’t at Oxford or Cambridge, wearing tails and bashing around in a vintage Land Rover Defender. I immediately began growing floppy hair that looked totally awful on me (thanks, Hugh). I got a fantastic introduction to seeing movies in New York City, which culminated in the whole theater audibly groaning and laughing when Andie MacDowell delivered the absolute clunker “is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed” right at the critical final moment. And I recall two older women in front of me not batting an eyelid when Grant opens the film with his “fuckety fuck fuck fuck” lines, but loudly tut-tutting when the end credits showed John Hannah’s character with his new boyfriend (and this was in Chelsea! C’mon, ladies!) and Grant and MacDowell’s characters with a child out of wedlock.

These were among the reasons the film was revelatory for me. It featured a gay couple with zero fanfare, treating it as entirely normal (which it is, but this was three years before Ellen DeGeneres came out and was ostracized before sanity prevailed). The lead couple not only don’t get married but vow never to, underlining a couple in love is a couple in love, no matter the paperwork. The film wasn’t cutesy—sure, it had its share of quirky characters and cringe-worthy moments, but one of the main characters dies, the lead woman marries another guy (albeit briefly), and the climactic wedding never actually happens. Vanity Fair ranked Four Weddings 24th on its list, noting it seemed “determined to unravel the traditional rom-com” and it “opened up territory for decades of rom-coms to come.”

I watched Four Weddings, stumbled out into the light of a Manhattan afternoon, and went back the next day and watched it again. Ever since, the release of anything by Richard Curtis and Working Title Films is a bit of an event for me, and I will happily re-watch pretty much anything from that combo, from Love Actually to the Bridget Jones films, The Boat that Rocked (released in the US as Pirate Radio), Yesterday, and About Time (try not to get emotional about the wonderful Bill Nighy and his farewell to his son). But the pièce de résistance for me—the mic drop rom-com—is Notting Hill.

Notting Hill makes you understand how elusive great rom-coms are. The story is just relatable enough, given most of us have imagined what it must be like to date a superstar—at least, we have since the film was released (Grant claims Curtis based it on a friend who did precisely that. For what it’s worth, I think I’d be great arm candy for a megastar). The chemistry between Grant and Julia Roberts is sensational, and their performances make it look easy (which it isn’t—remember Valentine’s Day?). And it’s just lovely, to borrow a very British-sounding word I use a lot. The minor characters are universally great (Alec Baldwin!); the ending uplifting; the music spot on. It’s a movie where everything comes together just as it should, which what we all long for in real life romances.

So, yeah, I watched Christmas in Notting Hill. I’m starting to think Curtis ruined me for rom-coms back in 1994 and I’ve been chasing Four Weddings and Notting Hill ever since, but it’s not going to stop me trying. Besides, seeking that buzz has given me Say Anything, Serendipity, Made of Honor (16% from the critics; 55% from the audience!), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and everything in between.

I confess I last night washed away the Hallmark memory by immediately viewing Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One, but suddenly realized what makes the Tom Cruise franchise so great is the love and friendship at its core. You can’t escape rom-coms—and why would you want to?