Movies suck now, and I blame money-hungry Hollywood. There has been this thing in movies where they adapt rom-coms or young romance book series into movies or shows. A few I can name off the top of my head are “My Life with the Walter Boys,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” “The Kissing Booth” and “After.”
All of these movies have been adapted from a young adult romance book or a similar genre. And they ALL follow the same script. The girl believes she isn’t pretty or needs a fake date to something, and the male main character (or characters) comes in and makes her think otherwise while simultaneously saying he isn’t her type making her lose all self-confidence in herself.
It’s the same wash, rinse and repeat. Over and over again, this trope is used and I am so over it. How many times can the female main character say “Oh, it’s not like that, we’re just friends.” It may just be because they are the “popular” romance books of this time. But I am sick of this weird genre of romance movies.
I apologize if you believe that some of these books were well-written romance books. I partly blame TikTok too, because they are the reason some of these atrocious books were made into movies. These movies make me want to physically hurl my popcorn at the TV screen.
I heavily dislike the trope of the used-to-be ugly girl now turned pretty by the power of puberty getting newfound attention from men her age. It makes my eyes physically twitch.
Yes, this does happen in real life sometimes, but this just adds societal pressures on a young teenager to “glow up” to meet the love of their life all at the ripe age of… 16.
Also, most of these movies are set in high school. This is fair because most of their viewers and readers are wide-eyed teenagers branching into the world of romance books. I just wish we had better new young adult romance books to give them. This is only worsened by making these types of books into three-part movies/shows.
I understand that movie directors need money, especially in this economy. So pumping out more of the same movies that went viral and did well once is how the game must be played. And these “fast food” (as I like to call them) movies give new and upcoming actors a chance to have their big break, but most of these adaptations do not do good.
In my opinion, I think we should stick with the heart wrenching romance movies like “The Notebook,” “Me Before You” and “Titanic.”
If people really want to have poorly written young adult romance so bad, I’ll even throw in the “Twilight” books in there.
I hate to see Hollywood-esque romance movies that involve both the characters pining for each other and fighting to be together die and be replaced with whatever we have now. I partly blame my father for showing me “Titanic” at a very early age, because that movie set the bar extremely high for romance.
And yes, I can acknowledge that the romance movies that I listed may have this “ugly girl gets noticed by attractive main male character” trope. But those movies have a way of doing the trope in a tasteful manner that the trope isn’t the singular driving point of the movie.
This new age “romance” script in movies makes them too predictable.
If I walk into a movie theater and I can tell by the poster that the entire movie is about a girl and the two male love interests going back and forth about who gets her, then I don’t have to waste my money. The poster itself is always a spoiler, whoever the girl is leaning on or looking to is the eventual outcome.
Predictability is boring. I want to be blindsided by tragedy, love, death and maybe even a spaceship when I see a romance movie. I need to be so invested in the characters that I have a physical reaction when the movie throws me a heart-wrenching plot twist. These new-age romance movies lack actual romance.