It’s Valentine’s Day, and that means either it’s time to receive hundreds of dollars worth of gifts that will either wilt or go bad in a week, or now’s your chance to spend some quality time staring at your computer screen watching bad movies. If option two sounds more like your life, here are five flicks that aren’t as pitiful to watch on Valentine’s Day as “Titanic.”
“Away We Go”
“Away We Go” picks up where most romantic comedies end: with a couple very much in love, committed and pregnant. The couple is Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph), who embark on a road trip across the country. They meet up with friends all over, each with their own hilarious parenting philosophies, such as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character’s distaste for strollers: “Why would I want to push my baby away from me?”
“Dan In Real Life”
In “Dan in Real Life,” Steve Carell plays Dan, a widower and parent of three lovable daughters, who unwittingly finds love in a chance encounter with a beautiful and sophisticated woman in a bookstore, Marie (Juliette Binoche). Unfortunately, she’s his brother’s girlfriend. And they’re all on a weekend family retreat together. He handles the situation like a grown-up, but of course over the weekend, they fall in love. His daughters are adorable: the eldest is a newly-licensed driver preparing to leave for college, the middle one has a knack for falling in love and tying cherry stems in a knot in her mouth and the youngest is just about the sweetest kid you could hope for without being naive. Ultimately, the movie revolves around family, and while a touching romance ensues, Dan doesn’t have to prove that he’s Prince Charming; he’s a single dad who loves his brother and his kids, and that’s perfect enough for Marie.
“Friends with Benefits”
“Friends with Benefits” shares its premise with “No Strings Attached” – two friends decide to have emotionless sex but ultimately fall in love in the process – but it’s smart, funny and sweet. It’s about two clever, career-oriented people so emotionally damaged by their families that they can’t handle the mess of a relationship. And it updates the rom-com fairytale; what these characters want is an equal, a best friend and a partner. It’s a film very conscious of its genre – there’s even a fake romantic comedy film within a film that the characters poke fun at – but it transcends and reinvents it. Yes, there are many frank (though well-concealed) sex scenes, and the outcome is horribly predictable, but the cleverness and strength of characters make this film everything a modern romantic comedy should be.
“Definitely, Maybe”
In “Definitely, Maybe,” recently divorced Will Haynes (Ryan Reynolds) decides to tell his incredibly cute daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) the story of how he met her mother, but he tells it as a mystery. He changes all the names and tells the story of the three most important women (Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Banks and Rachel Weisz) who graced his life, and it’s up to Maya to decipher which one is her mother. We understand why each pair would have fallen for each other, even though the relationships all ultimately ended. There are some very funny moments, like when Will accidentally slips in a detail about having smoked in the ‘90s, or when he shows up on Weisz’s doorstep, only to be greeted by her drunken boyfriend (Kevin Kline), who Will assumes is her father, and who gives him lessons in what it means to be a real man – apparently, it involves a lot of scotch. When Will finally does figure out which woman he should be with, when the many layers of all of the characters have been peeled off and revealed, it’s a corny but realistic happy ending.
“Easy A”
“Easy A” is a high school romantic comedy in the tradition of John Hughes films, with the biting wit and religious satire of “Saved” and the quip of “Juno.” It’s the film that launched Emma Stone into stardom as Olive Penderghast, the wise-cracking, confident and lovable outsider who accidentally finds herself in the middle of a rumor that she slept with someone – who is, in fact, imaginary – on a first date. As they are reading “The Scarlet Letter” in class, she decides to embroider an “A” on her own clothing in a show of irony that’s lost on her classmates. The premise is dubious but the execution flawless. It’s ultimately about a strong young woman who’s too smart for her classmates, and whose very likable parents (Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci) explain her completely. The movie delivers many well-deserved laughs and a sweet ending where she finds the boy who’s her match.