I think I’ve lost my sense of romance.  At least when it comes to the movies. I seem to have become too cynical.  I used to love love stories.  Dramas, romantic comedies – I loved them all.  Watching two people fall madly in love and then head off into the sunset to live happily ever after was always a great way to spend an evening.  But I’ve found over the years that I can no longer believe in Happily Ever After.  As the movie goes on I find myself looking more and more askance at the couple-to-be and questioning their chances of ever really making it work.  Are these two really going to live forever in wedded bliss?  9 times out of 10 I just don’t see it happening.

The first time this really struck me was when I saw As Good As It Gets.  I appreciated Melvin’s struggles to “be a better person.”  I could understand and sympathize with Carol’s concerns for her son and her desire to be taken care of.  But I still left the theatre thinking “There is no way in hell these two are going to last more than 15 minutes past the credits.”  He was too difficult, too old, too annoying, and she was too real to put up with that for long just because of his money.  There were just too many reasons why it was never going to happen.

And even if they did get together – for how long?  What does Happily Ever After mean, anyway?  I question this especially when watching teen romances.  Yes, Samantha and Jake in 16 Candles did make a cute couple, and I enjoyed seeing them get together in the end.  But did that mean that they were going to have grandchildren together?  Or does Happily Ever After in teen years simply mean that they stay in love through high school and then cheat on each other when they get to college like everyone else?

After As Good As It Gets ruined movie romance for me I started really studying the couples in other movies.  I didn’t particularly care for Romancing the Stone to begin with but I found the romancing part to be on rocky ground.  Sure the sex was probably great, but I found the idea of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas as a couple impossible to swallow.  Michael Douglas’s Jack was for all intents and purposes a cad – was he really going to settle down with a mousy romance novelist, even one as hot as Kathleen Turner?  Try as I might I just couldn’t see him going off every morning for a day of swashbuckling and then coming home every night by 6 for dinner, dirty diapers and and an earful of her writer’s block issues.

And so The Reel Thing was born.  C and I want to see how the rest of you feel about these movie romances.  Yeah – we know it’s all pretend. But if it weren’t – would you be clapping as the happy couple walked down the aisle?  Or would you want to wait out that “you have a year to buy the gift” rule?

We invite you to rate some of our favorite (and not so favorite) couples on this site. We’ll give you our opinions - you give us yours.  Are these couples doomed?  Or are they The Reel Thing?

k&c