The ending credits roll up, the room softly illuminates and everyone prepares to leave. While you’re gathering your things you can’t help but wonder “Why do I continue to pay for these sappy love movies?” Why do we continue to indulge ourselves in these helplessly pathetic but hopelessly romantic movies? Women call them classic romances, while men simply refer to them as “chick flicks,” but we all fall victim to watching them.A few examples of the classics would be “Up at the Villa,” “Pride & Prejudice,” “The Notebook,” “A Walk to Remember,” “Pretty Woman,” “The Lake House,” and “While You Were Sleeping.” The list could literally go on and on with these timeless movies.
Movies like “The Notebook” allow for an escape from reality into a world where love conquers all. They allow for the development of inherent fantasies that have been produced over time through countless love stories. They allow for fantasies of wanting to be romantically swept off our feet no matter how much we claim being independent and self-sufficient. We want to be protected or be the protector.
We place ourselves in the role of the dying heroine because it engenders emotional responses like tears of happiness and joy. These movies construct a more optimistic world for us, a world where we believe in love and the impossible. A world where men hold the doors open for women; and where women really appreciate and honor men for who they are. We begin to believe in a world where we hold ourselves virtuous for our one true love; a world, where we believe in true loves. We continue to watch romantic movies because we want to believe in more than the reality that has been set before us.
Society is overly concerned with love. There are dozens of dating Web sites where you can display your best characteristics to find a match. From the time we first began liking the opposite sex-and for some the same sex-we have been in a constant race to find the perfect person. The pressure is so strong that society makes you feel like something is wrong with you if you are forty, single and alone.
And so we hold on to these sappy love movies because it allows us to believe that our true love is still out there. Romantic movies give us hope that one day our story will begin where love finds us, we encounter some difficulty, and then in the end love triumph over all else.
The site www.ivillage.com lists the following films as the top 10 most romantic movies: City of Angels (1998), Romeo and Juliet (1968, 1996), An Affair to Remember (1957), Ghost (1990), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Casablanca (1942), Gone With the Wind (1939), Titantic (1997) and topping the list, Sleepless in Seattle (1993).