Why do some women complain about Romance movies?

[Assassin X]

Maybe the women of AO can help me out here. Obviously since I am not a woman I don't understand this. lol.

Wekk obviously women see romance movies (not that they don't see other movies or that men don't see romance movies....I think?!?), the tale of love always winning yadda yadda for some reason never gets old. Its a woman thing.

Well my aunt seems to be part of this small group of woman that will see romance movies over and over (like women do) but afterwords complain and I quote:

"I f**king hate romance movies that are so damn predictable! Maybe there are three people (lovers), or maybe their split apart, or maybe they don't know they love each other... no matter what in the end you always know what is going to happen!"

No maybe its because I am a guy and we KNOW what "romance movie" means but if as a woman you know that "These movies are all the same". Why complain about them and keep seeing them? Isn't the point of the movie that the lovers (or true lovers) ALWAYS turn out happy? DUH! I mean I probably have seen a few romance movies but I am pretty sure thats the idea, hence the genre.

So why do people like my aunt still complain and keep seeing them if its a NEVER changing genre?

[Skygirl]

It could have to do with their psychology. Perhaps they aren't satisfied with their own relationships and are therefore jealous of the happy endings?

[Nu Kua]

I can't really get into romance movies either. They over-simplify things, and tend to be very stereo-typical.
Like red long stemmed roses... men somehow have been duped into thinking that a woman will swoon if given red roses. Maybe this would be more likely if the roses were grown locally by a real human being and put together with care and thought of the person receiving them. When I worked in the floral department of a major grocery store chain, however, I learned that the roses are grown with a butt load of pesticides, sprayed with chemicals to help preserve their color, are stripped of their thorns and packaged in cardboard by mostly Mexican women almost in slave labor conditions, and then held in a dark cooler for up to 3 months before we get them. Plus since they are bred for color and durability, most of them have no smell and they look very plastic.

Don't even get me started on diamonds...

But then, I think too much.

Really romance would have to be unique to the couple and probably somewhat spontaneous.

[Reef Badlaw]

I gotta vote for the heart-embrace effect... where an on-screen woman who's not in-love (or thinks she is), gets transcendentally 'moved' by some guy. Women understand and recognize true love pretty fast, and they're able to savor the feeling of their heart 'enclosing' around a guy who excites the chemistry. They possess from the inside out, while guys possess from the outside in. -Generally.

And since they love being women, they love seeing/experiencing other women falling in-love 'n being loved.

An ex-gf watched Romancing The Stone a dozen times, but began clicking it off a few minutes after Joan met Jack... I didn't hafta ask why. I already knew.

The complaints probably derive from non-Romancing The Stone-type scripts that can't nullify the 'obsessive' aspect of romance.

[rioja]

Perhaps subconsciously we want to measure it against our own experience. When it's seriously slushy we know it doesn't represent the real world but still feel compelled to watch.

Many a time subject to mood on the day I'm willing it to fall apart /hero or heroine die/.......anything to make it seem a bit more real, but the underlying romantic in me secretly blubbs at the happy ending ...all is well....aaaaaah

Little girls particularly are bombarded with fairy tale endings (think sleeping beauty, cinderella etc) to see adults achieving it via Hollywood could be a comfort factor of expectation fulfilled finally since childhood ? We may get grouchy after as we realise our childhood memories are just that 'fantasy tales' and Hollywood is just perpetuating the myth ?

[HindSight]

Maybe your aunt is too intelligent for movies. Or perhaps she knows there are only seven basic plots to every book and movie that tells a story:

1) The monster - This tale of conflict typically recounts the hero’s ordeals, an escape from death, and ends with a community or the world itself saved from evil.

2) Rags to Riches - modest, downtrodden characters whose special talents or beauty are at last revealed to the world for a happy ending

3) Quest - a hero, normally joined by sidekicks, traveling the world and fighting to overcome evil and secure a priceless treasure, The hero not only gains the treasure he seeks, but also the girl, and they end as King and Queen

4) Voyage and Return - protagonist leaves normal experience to enter an alien world, returning after what often amounts to a thrilling escape

5) Comedy - confusion reigns until at last the hero and heroine are united in love

6) Tragedy - human overreaching and its terrible consequences

7) Rebirth - literal rebirth like Snow White or Scrooge

For a romance, it's always: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, girl has moved on to new boy, first boy over-kills to get the girl back, confrontation of 1st and 2nd boy, boy wins, boy gets girl.

If these are the 99.9% of all plots, then the only thing that makes a story worth seeing or reading or hearing ... is the juicy details in the middle. If a story just follows the plot straight through, the story is too predictable and boring. People are looking for the twists in the middle and somone like your aunt, is looking for an alternative ending like boy get boy; some kind of twist.

Maybe stories are just too low for her intelligence. Maybe she has just seen enough that her mind has the seven plots figured out so by the end of Scene Two, she's got the entire movie figured out.

Maybe she knows the old script writing addage that the bad guy always has to be introduced by the third character of the movie/book.

I used to watch detective movies. It was always boring: the killer was always the 3rd character introduced. Try looking for that sometime: read a book, watch TV, watch a movie. The bad guy is always character #3.

Entertainment is like making meatloaf: you know how it looks before you start, you know what you will end up, the excellence of devouring it all depends on what spices was put into it. That's the 'flavor'. You aunt wants flavor, not just a dead cow on her table.

[The Silence]

Well, as a guy, I honestly & actually enjoy romance for whatever reason...tragedies (like Romeo & Juliet or The Kouga Ninja Scrolls), romantic-comedic-dramas, harem (anime & manga), depressing romances, etc., etc...

Though I've always noticed something when it came to women, especially older women, when it comes to the key elements of romance itself...& those are generally always the same, with the exception of, dare I say it, the Time Traveler's Wife or The Notebook. They like the one's with happy-go-lucky predictable endings, not those depressing "wtf?!" one's that they rarely find appealing...of course there's always Twilight, which I personally hate. After they've had the satisfaction of viewing their favorite romantic flicks, then they start hating it perhaps simply because it's something so off-key that in reality it couldn't ever in their wildest dreams have a hope of possibly coming true...EVER. Perhaps they're envious loathing, whether they'll admit or not, is why they lose interest yet all the while wouldn't mind watching another one because something tells 'em it'll be different...

[Mezurashi]

some women dislike romance movies even though they always indulge in them for the same reasons that some men dislike action movies even though they always indulge in them.

Hindsight's point about plots is very, very, very relevant - as someone who tried my hand at writing (fiction, essays, et al) I have run into the brick wall known in writers circles as The Thirty Six Plots. there are 36 plots which are told over and over and over again (and I'm sure an examination of these 36 would reveal that they all fit within the Seven Basic Plots that Hindsight laid out).

anyone who has studied the work of Joseph W. Campbell (The Hero With A Thousand Faces) will immediately understand the basic plot of any kind of Adventure story (from The Odyssey thru to District 9 and Avatar).

anyone who has read even one Harlequin Romance novel has pretty much read ALL of them.

but we always fall back on the familiar because we hope against hope that maybe, this time, things will be unique and new ... or at least seem that way.

one of my fave 'Adventure/Romance' movies is Joe Vs. The Volcano (written by John Patrick Shanley of Moonstruck and Doubt fame) and even though pretty much EVERYONE hated it when it came out (and still hate it to this day) I loved it because it was a Unique view of the tried and true Adventure/Romance plot.

so when a friend of mine told me she'd 'had it' with 'Romance' movies I showed her that one.

she was smiling and crying at the end ... even though she told me she hated it half way through.

everyone has their 'perfect' movie in their minds. the problem is, when they are confronted by the fact that their 'perfect' movie is a hunk of dreck (either because they see something better OR they see their perfect movie on screen and come to the sudden realization that their aspirations/expectations were sadly lacking in depth) they respond with negativity.

Those who CAN, DO.
Those who CAN'T, TEACH.
Those who CAN'T TEACH, CRITICIZE.

or to put it another way;

the incapable are the first to criticize the competent ...

which isn't to say that women are all 'negatizers' in this manner, nor all men ...

but so many of us cannot grasp the fact that we are talentless, shallow and pale figures who depend on others to 'enrich' our lives because our own creativity is so lacking we can't do it for ourselves.

sorry, digressed a bit there ...

[HindSight]

I also write novels for a hobby. But most of what I write, the main characters are children on purpose. Why? To avoid all the normal adult scenarios. The first two books I wrote were nearly Dennis the Mence cartoons. Every page was a cartoon with a punch line.

For the adult books I have written, I learned a trick. I build up one character to direct the reader to like that character more than the others, and there is always a side character that has the first character's back. So if the main character gets killed off, you have to read the rest of the book to make sure the 2nd character took proper revenge for your favorite character's death! HAHAHA! Man, I'm evil sometimes. Best book I ever wrote, though. Here's yer twist, Mate! Grin!

[Cyranothe2nd]

Romance movies portray a really simplistic view of love--that love can save you or change you into something else or once you fall in love your life will always be happy. And many girls grow up believing this to be true and then can never be happy because what they want isn't attainable.

Also, some romance movies hate women: http://www.cracked.com/article/194_7...ly-hate-women/

And don't EVEN get me started on how "romantic" the co-dependent abusive relationship in Twilight is!

[phedrereine]

Romance is a constant tug-of-war between hope and the bitter betrayal of reality. Women can't give up the hope that love will conquer all because, as Cyrano said, we've been bred to think that way (and I suspect there is some sort of biological thing going on, too...), and yet once women are experienced enough to realize how pointlessly depressing and so-not-happy-in-the-end love can be, they become resentful and scornful of that perfect view that movies are portraying. But ah! They cannot give up hope. And then when a depressing love story comes along (even if it's well-done) they hate that it didn't fulfill those hopes, yet at the same time they still possibly appreciate the realism, which they may or may not admit.

So there really is no win/win situation. The best response you'll get from women is by making a romance that is more down to earth, believable and relatable in the progression of the story and interaction of the characters, yet still has a happy ending.

So then you get Hollywood, which can't do that anymore. They churn out so many romantic comedies that are just bad. And so it's hard to tell when women complain about them whether they hated it because they recognized it for what it was (a badly-done film), or because it didn't secretly "fulfill" their hopes and dreams (or on the opposite side of the fence, no matter how realistic the movie was, they still couldn't buy the happy ending because they have never experienced one.)

It's really muddy territory, actually...

[Cyranothe2nd]

Phed,

Not all women are that way. I grew up looking for that sweep-you-off-your-feet love and yes, got depressed and angry when I couldn't find it. And then I realized that what I wanted wasn't real and wouldn't make me happy even if I had it (because who wants a man to control/save you?) and I learned that love is an act of will; an admission and then a covering of another's faults. It takes work and compromise. But the love I have now is SO MUCH BETTER than the love I see in romance movies because it's real and it's honest.

My point is that a woman doesn't have to give up hope to have love or be constantly caught in the romance/depression spiral. She can choose to step out of that and embrace something true.