Recovering from a herniated disc is frustratingly slow, annoyingly painful/uncomfortable and exceedingly inconvenient. I've had to cancel plans (including a trip to KC for the Goo Goo Dolls concert 😭) and take off more work/use more sick time than in the last 10 years combined (in the first two weeks, I spent less than 3 hours in the office and on average worked half days the next two weeks). I think I'm at about 75-80%, but even improving to that point is still limiting.
While convalescing, I made some potentially questionable rom-com viewing choices, including Isn't it Romantic. When it hit theaters the day before Valentine's Day, I rolled my eyes and moved on. I'm not a huge Rebel Wilson fan - she tends to be a bit crass for my taste - on top of the fact that I'm kind of a picky rom-com watcher (no me gusta Titanic, Dirty Dancing or Grease).
Though having said that, I'm now mentally listing off the rom-coms I do like...which means I have to make a literal list.
In no particular order:
- While You Were Sleeping (1995)
- Miss Congeniality (2000)
- Two Weeks Notice (2002)
- Music and Lyrics (2007)
- About a Boy (2002)*
- Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
- Pretty Woman (1990)
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
- Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
- Easy A (2010)
- Crazy Stupid Love (2011)
- 27 Dresses (2008)
- Devil Wears Prada (2006)
- Begin Again (2013)
- Bridget Jones Diary (2001)
- Kate and Leopold (2001)
- The Holiday (2006)
- Leap Year (2010)
- The Women (2008)
- He's Just Not That Into You (2009)
- Hitch (2005)
- Couples Retreat (2009)
- The Other Woman (2014)
- Wedding Planner (2001)
- When We First Met (2018)
There's a bit of a Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant trend going on, with them being the highest reoccurring actors, including acting in one movie together (Two Weeks Notice). I think Emma Stone and Meg Ryan come in second with two movies each.
This list is based on rewatch-ability...I've seen each of them three or more times. Some are intrinsically good movies, like Two Weeks Notice, and some I just enjoy, like The Holiday. Technically I only enjoy half of The Holiday...the Kate Winslet/Jack Black parts (it's my all time favorite Jack Black performance). Comparing their dialogue with the Cameron Diaz/Jude Law half is downright painful...it's like the writers just gave up (except for the scene with Jude Law's daughters, which is pretty adorable). Couples Retreat is another "I just enjoy it" movie. I don't know why I love it so much. It's not great, but it seriously cracks me up.
But I digress.
Beware! Spoilers ahead!
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Isn't it Romantic. The basic plot is Natalie (Rebel Wilson) is an architect in NYC, living in a crappy apartment with a fairly disheveled bichon frise. She's a bit of a pushover at work, lacking confidence to assert herself, to the point where she does other people's jobs for them (calling IT for the office manager, going out to get coffee for a new client). Her only friends are fellow architect Josh (Adam Devine) and Whitney (Betty Gilpin), her assistant. She's also super cynical about love. When she was a child, her mother told her "they'll never make movies about girls like us" (ie. beautiful and skinny) and that "love’s not a fairy tale. There’s no happy endings." Now an adult, she hates romantic comedies, because they brainwash women into believing unrealistic fantasies, where women wake up with their hair and make-up done and some man will save them. On her way home from work one evening, she's mugged on the subway and accidentally knocks herself out. When she wakes up, she finds her life has turned into a romantic comedy.
They did a lot of things really well, from the casting to all the clichés scattered throughout the movie. Liam Hemsworth played Blake, the new client of Natalie's firm. When we first meet him and he assumes Natalie is the coffee girl, he doesn't have an accent and is just patronizing enough that it overrides his good looks. In rom-com land, he has an Australian accent, which leans into the "accents are sexy" cliché and does a bunch of nonsensical romantic-y things, like write his phone number on rose petals (loose, not in sequence...see GIF below). Josh (Adam Devine) is a good, supportive friend, as well as interested in Natalie right from the get go...which is something she naturally doesn't perceive. At all. That's actually the thing they did best - creating Josh's character. He believes in Natalie from the very beginning, literally pushing her to attend a meeting to show her designs for the new project. He's always cared about her and saw her for who she is, not just once she's "beguiling" in the rom-com universe.
Some other great clichés are everything's cleaner, there are flowers everywhere, Natalie narrates/hears a voice-over of what she's thinking, her apartment is bigger, more beautiful and she has a giant walk-in closet (she calls 911 to say she's been robbed and all her stuff has been replaced with nicer stuff)...oh, and her dog is well behaved, newly bathed and does the trick she's been trying to teach him. When she gets to the office, not only does Whitney no longer works for her, but she's her rival. And we can't forget Donny, the token gay best friend who's always available and doesn't have a job so he can appear at a moments notice to offer fashion and life advice.
Once Natalie wakes up and figures out what's going on (that she's in "the Matrix for lonely women"), she tries to figure out how to get out of it. Blake is clearly taken with her, so she surmises that she needs to get a guy to fall in love with her in order to break free. She discovers along the way that she's stuck in PG-13 version of life, with noises blocking out profanity and sketch being skipped over - she spends the night with Blake, but it jumps straight from them making out in the hallway to the next morning. She repeatedly tries to "make it happen," but it immediately jumps back to the same scene the next morning, with her waking up to the alarm clock and Blake walking back in after a shower.
Josh is the only person who's acting remotely the same, so he and Natalie go for a walk in Central Park to get her some fresh air. While they're walking, they happen upon a woman who is choking on some food. Josh gives her the Heimlich, saving her life. She turns out to be Isabella (Priyanka Chopra), a swimsuit model and yoga ambassador (the hell?). She's smitten with Josh and asks him out of a drink. They instantly become an item, much to Natalie's chagrin. Shortly thereafter, Isabella invites Blake and Natalie to join her and Josh for a weekend in the Hamptons, where it's announced that Isabella and Josh are getting married...the next day. This happens just after Natalie realizes she's in love with Josh and decides she needs to tell him, which turns into winning him back from Isabella.
Being in a healthy relationship is another good message they include...that you should be with someone who understands and cares about you, and not just because they're hot. Isabella loves calling Josh "Mush," because he mushes up his neck and makes a funny face. He's clearly not a fan of the nickname, but rolls with it because she thinks it's funny. Blake is "sweetly" domineering, just doing his thing and making plans without really caring about getting input from Natalie. He ultimately turns out to be a real jerk, stealing Natalie's architectural ideas and pitching them to his dad as if they're his own. The character goes a bit over the top with him wanting her to change her name when they get married...not just her last name, but her first name too, since he doesn't think "Natalie" will go over well with his crowd.
Two final scenes are necessary to complete the rom-com checklist...slow motion running to stop the wedding and the obligatory wedding interruption. Both happen, with Natalie telling Josh he shouldn't marry Isabella and listing out the reason why he should be with her...which brings her to the realization that she's worthy of love. And that's the ticket to escaping back to reality...after running the "just married" car into a tree.
When she wakes up, she finds out she's been in a medically induced coma (for 18 hours, if I remember correctly). When she pulls out the IV, blood squirts and she exclaims and uncensored "f*ck," confirming she's back in the real world. She races home and is happy to find her crappy apartment and trick-less dog (though he did leave her a present for being gone so long). Her neighbor Donny turns out to be gay in reality...as well as a weed dealer. At work, Natalie is so glad to be friends with Whitney again and tells Josh that he shouldn't live in a fantasy, staring at the hot model on the billboard outside her window. Josh makes her sit in his chair and then walks over to her desk, where his reflection is clearly seen in the window...showing her that all the times she caught him "looking at the model" he was really looking at her. (awwwww! 😍)
Since it's an utterly secular movie, going in the audience shouldn't expect traditional mores to be the order of the day...but being PG-13, there are fairly reasonable limits to what is said and shown. My biggest complaint about the movie is the unnecessary anatomy related jokes/comments, excluding the next morning bedroom scene because it's really funny how frustrated it makes Natalie. The comments are just crass enough that I wouldn't watch the movie with my mom, though I guess they're easy enough to mute to watch a "censored" version.
I appreciated the overall message, best described by the line "'You can search the entire universe and never find a being more worthy of love than yourself.'” Natalie discovering and coming to understand her worth is the main point of the movie, without her value being based on the leading man falling in love with her. She's smart, funny and caring...and gosh darn it people like her! 😊
Having watched Isn't it Romantic a second time for research purposes (that's my story and I'm sticking to it), I think it's going to become #26 on my list of favorite rom-coms, because I can definitely see myself not only watching it again, but being in a "you know what I want to watch?" kind of mood.
Do you have any favorite rom-coms to suggest? Or guilty pleasure movies (like Couples Retreat for me)? 🎥
~ Katie Q. 🐧
* I almost didn't include About a Boy, since I consider it more of a dark comedy than a rom-com...but it's categorized in the "comedy" and "romance" genres on IMDB, so it makes the list. It's also one of the few examples of the movie being better than the book.
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