Fantasy Film Festival: How Sweet Can You Be?
Speaking as a single woman, it seems that there are really two ways to approach Valentine’s Day. Either it’s the Scourge of Winter and must be avoided at all costs, or it’s something to be embraced to the point of forgetting there’s supposed to be a guy around in the first place. Bring on the chocolate! Pass the wine! Are those some dangly heart earrings I see? Excellent.
In the somewhat ambivalent spirit of the upcoming holiday, we at CH would like to present a two-post series on the films of Valentine’s Day and the films of those who would rather give February 14 over to someone else, say…Haters International. Whatever. Today we’ll be exploring a week’s worth of the sappiest, tear-jerkiest, eye-rollingest movies out there–we’re talking the romances that would make any Harlequin writer say, “Girl? Please.”
Without further ado:
An Affair to Remember: Cliched, but there it is. Any movie that other movies hold up as the Gold Standard of Sap must clearly be on the list. Plus, “her shriveled little legs!”
Return to Me: Super-sweet, but also kind of great. Bonus: directed by Bonnie Hunt, who knows a funny joke when she sees it.
Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken: Mostly loved by horsey little girls and post-Jake Ryan Michael Schoeffling fans in the 80s. ‘Nuff said.
Garden State: Supposedly hip and charming, but the ending gives me hives. It’s like bathing in maple syrup.
Ghost: Before Meredith on The Office defiled it, this one was the romance movie of the 80s. Love from beyond the grave! Clearly sweet and…not…creepy? Ho-kay.
The Notebook: The CH staff must admit that someone around HQ hasn’t seen this one, but Googling “sappiest movie” yielded so many Notebook hits that it made the list, fair and square.
Somewhere in Time: How can a Jane Seymour/Christopher Reeve time-travel movie not instantly raise the old insulin level?
Tune in next time for anti-Valentiners and the movies they love!
movies, Valentine’s Day, romantic movies
February 15th, 2008 at 1:36 am
[...] Well, that’s over. The day of—depending who you ask—love and affection or chocolate and bitterness has come and gone, for better or for worse. And we at CH escaped with barely a scratch: a cupcake here, a card from mom there, a few friends over for the evening. But movies? In the movies, it’s always the day of love. So much romance! Someone’s always falling in love, always rubbing it in, whether it’s the utterly satisfying to a subtle and well-crafted love story or two siblings who just don’t know which way is up. And so, since we are nothing if not dutiful about exploring cinema (and the hype surrounding said cinema), we’d like to present the good, the bad, and the ugly of movie romance. [...]