In her new Fox sitcom “The Mindy Project,” Mindy Kaling plays a 31-year-old doctor who knows exactly what to expect in love and romance.
Someday she will have what Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal found in “When Harry Met Sally.”
Or maybe she will fall into the kind of love that Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant came to share in “Notting Hill.”
Which one, in the end, isn’t important. What’s important is that Mindy has a plan and it’s a plan she knows will work, because it has worked all her life, every time she watches one of those movies.
Mindy, whose name in the show is Lahiri, measures life by the standards of romantic comedies, And before you dismiss that approach as foolish and delusional, consider this: Among all possible media role models, most of the others are way worse.
What would be a better dinner date, Meg Ryan faking it over the salad or Teresa Giudice flipping over the whole table?
Columbia/courtesy Everett Collection
Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in the old school rom-com “When Harry Met Sally” from 1989
Nor does Mindy stand alone in seeing rom-coms as her happy place.
Earlier Tuesday nights on Fox we have Zooey Deschanel playing Jess Day in “New Girl.”
Last year Jess walked in on her boyfriend and another gal, which led Jess to seek a new apartment, which led her to the three guys with whom she now shares living quarters and a hit sitcom.
Before she moved in, she told them that because of the fresh breakup, she would probably be watching “Dirty Dancing” “six or seven times a day.”
With that declaration Jess identified the other major function of our versatile friend the rom-com. When it’s not providing hope, it provides solace.
And not just to wistful or wounded women. Where urban legend tags all rom-coms as chick flicks, the good ones get to the guys, too. The difference is that being guys, they don’t admit it.
In the movie “Love Actually,” Daniel (Liam Neeson) hears his young stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster) confess that he’s utterly and hopelessly in love with a girl who doesn’t know he exists. Unless your name is Matt Damon or Denzel Washington, guys, you know that feeling.
After Sam lays it out, Daniel announces, “We need Kate and Leo and we need them now.”
They watch “Titanic.”
Rom-coms are one of the things in our lives that almost always work. You know, like aspirin and microwave ovens.
But there’s a problem.
Hollywood has pretty much stopped making them.
Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are still here. But no one is signing them for endearing love stories.
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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