Romantic comedies are as old as Hollywood itself. People have always loved watching people fall in love, but the genre ebbs and flows in its popularity. Sometimes, when you have a few in a row that seems to falter, studios can waver on whether or not they are appropriate bets. While these comedies were big in the 90s, in the early 2000s they began to flop. People were worried that the traditional romantic comedy would disappear from the landscape.
Then the dick jokes came.
The early 2000s saw an incredible rise in the raunch-com, comedy films that prioritized blue dialogue, gross humor, and the deconstruction of male character archetypes to provide a different look at life and love.
Check out the video from The Take below.
Did the Raunch-Com Save the Romantic Comedy?
If you watched the video, then you know that the roots for raunchy movies go basically back to the late 1960s, with movies like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, The Graduate, as well as Harold and Maude in the 70s, which helped push cultural boundaries. While the sex comedy thrived then as well, we saw a shift into the romantic versions in the 90s with movies like Clerks and There's Something About Mary.
Those paved the way for the 2000s, where it seemed like Judd Apatow ruled the world. He directed The 40-Year-old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Trainwreck, and produced Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, along with many others.
These movies were critical and box office hits, launching the careers of their stars and ushering in a new heyday for the genre, but they also saved the traditional romantic comedy as well.
With raunch-coms coming in and subverting expectations, tropes, and characters, they also found a way to tell traditional romantic stories that made them appealing to broader audiences. While the R-rating could be the kiss of death for some films, they actually made these movies more appealing and marketed them to both men and women.
'Forgetting Sarah Marshall'Credit: Universal Pictures
This all changed audience and studio perception. People were excited to go to the theaters to watch. Even traditional romantic comedies got a boost, with these zany films allowing comedy to take on the box office and prove that laughter, if done well, is a viable way for studios to make money.
That boost was enough to make sure the genre didn't go away and made room for it to expand as streaming began to come into play and people could actively pick what they wanted to watch.
Let us know your favorite raunch-coms in the comments.
Source: The Take
