Evan (Michael Cera, left) could get the chance to hook up with Becca (Martha MacIsaac, right) as he has the night of his life in Superbad.
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More than anything, this is because what we see onscreen in those can-we-connect romances does not seem to have any relevance to what's happening around us. What now, for example, are the differences a man and a woman have to overcome to get together? Their lives look pretty alike. They worry about what they do, about whether they're maximizing their talents, about what others think of them, about the way they look, about if they will be able to make the money they need. A love interest is no longer an alternative to or solace from the rat race; she's another rat. As such, it's perhaps understandable that a suitor expects to be able to pull her over for a quick mating session and then get back on track. Where is romance in all that?
And it's not just happily-ever-after that has changed. The global nature of dating--the access to a limitless pool of mates just a click away--means that people feel they hardly need to overcome difficulties in relationships. If the whole getting-together thing proves too hard, they can just move on. Juliet's a Capulet? Bummer. Back to Facebook. Finding a soul mate is no longer a determined steeplechase over every obstacle. It's a numbers game--about as fraught with epic drama and desperation as recruiting a new middle manager for the nonperishables division. Perhaps it's not surprising that the romantic movie that most touched a nerve in viewers last year was The Break-Up.
But there is an even graver foe than shifting sexual mores and dating practices that romance has to face down. It's an old nemesis, one she has never truly destroyed: money.
On its first weekend, Titanic made about $28 million. Nothing special. It didn't hit $150 million for 14 days, which, considering what Paramount had spent on it, was agonizingly sluggish. It wasn't until two months into the movie's release, when most movies are sputtering out, that Titanic proved its mettle. My Big Fat Greek Wedding started even smaller. Romantic movies don't open well. The one with the highest opening weekend is Will Smith's Hitch, which, at $43 million, is considered an underperformance for him.
Why should that matter? It's all legal currency, no? Well, no. Not to Hollywood. Studios make most of their box-office money in the first 10 days of a movie's release, when they take in 90% of the movie's profits and the cinema owners, or exhibitors, get the rest. After two weeks, they generally split the proceeds 70/30 and then down from there. Spider-Man 3, the most successful movie in America so far this year, made 45% of its profits to date on the first weekend. Titanic, by contrast, made 5%. The studios don't just want money, they want it fast. Spidey fast. Otherwise the guy who sells the popcorn and makes sure the toilets are clean gets too much of it.
Opening a movie big is not rocket science. It involves spending a lot of moolah on special effects and on preopening publicity. But even more, it involves appealing to the type of people for whom seeing a movie the first weekend is important: young men. Thus there are a lot of movies--this is not sexist, it's just business--about superheroes, things blowing up and terrifying ordeals at the hands of ghastly psychos. (To be fair, research shows young women also enjoy the last.) Then the guys--or girls--can attain some social status from being able to discuss the cool scenes. Nobody goes to work or class the next day and says, "You gotta go see that awesome broken heart!"
Where does this all leave the romantic movie? Alas, in the hands of young men. The only relationship film that has drawn a crowd this year is June's Knocked Up, in which a guy and a girl meet, have drunken sex, get pregnant and then, 44 minutes and dozens of penis jokes later, actually have something that resembles a tender scene. Not exactly a femme fantasy, but more than half the people who went to see the film on opening weekend were women, and two-thirds were couples, who helped propel it to $145 million and counting. Aug. 17 brings us Superbad, concocted by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, who, respectively, directed and starred in Knocked Up. It too has the trappings of a love story--boys have comic misadventures as they try to get the girls of their dreams--but it's so steeped in men's bathroom humor, you half expect to see one of those colorful little urinal cakes somewhere at your feet when it's over.
In these tales, one of the chief obstacles to HEA is the man himself. You can just feel the tension. Will he grow up in time to exhibit the 15 minutes of normal behavior he needs to get the girl?
And, more wrenching still: Can he separate enough from his buddies to try? It's notable that while there's a black hole where romantic love used to be, man love is all around. Not homoerotic love, although there are hints of that too in, say, 300. This is the kind of sacrificial, I'll-do-anything-for-you love that we associate with young lovers. Ocean's Thirteen is essentially the story of what guys will do to avenge the frilly-shirt-wearing Vegas moneyman they adore. (One of them writes him love letters!) Spider-Man 3 is as much about Peter Parker and erstwhile best friend Harry Osborn getting back together as it is about Peter and Mary Jane. In Knocked Up, the courtship that's most fun to watch is that between the two potential brothers-in-law.
Superbad is the purest iteration of the so-called bromance form yet. Two best friends, Seth and Evan, on the verge of graduating from high school, have to get booze, get over the fact that they're about to go their separate ways and get girls before the night is out. It sounds sweet, but it opens with Seth discussing with Evan which porn website they should subscribe to for the summer. (Top contender: Vagtastic.com. He also notes how jealous he is that the infant Evan got to nurse on Evan's mom's breasts. And it gets more vulgar from there.
After an early screening, attended by Rogen, who co-wrote it, and Apatow, who produced it, a young guy stood up in the audience to address the filmmakers. "I love this movie," he said. "I'm here with my future wife, and we learned a lot tonight." The new model for intimate human relations is the platonic love of one emotionally underdeveloped adolescent boy for another. God help us all.
The original version of this story had incorrect information about New Line's involvement with the filmed version of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera.