According to popular lore, the romantic film is based on a simple formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. But that is not true. For the most part, the boys have nothing to do with it. The cliche that actually serves as the infrastructure of the classic romance is that the female lead almost never ends up with the man she was originally supposed to spend the rest of her life with.
Romantic films wend their way to the altar as inevitably as action films lead nowhere. Powerful, ubiquitous cliches associated with the genre include the bride or groom suddenly getting ditched at the altar (The Philadelphia Story, The Graduate, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Runaway Bride.)
Romantic films frequently feature the pushy but lovable mother, the harried, befuddled father, the fat, mouthy but highly supportive girlfriend who wears glasses and has never had a date, and the gay neighbour or co-worker who knows what you're going through because he's had his heart broken so many times himself. In a number of contemporary romances, the male lead has a best friend who is a lovable slob.
Teen romances have their own separate cliches. Actually, they have one separate cliche: teens from out of town find it hard to fit in so they start hanging around with social misfits or goths or beatniks or vampires suffering from social anxiety disorders. In teen romances, the jocks are invariably portrayed as cruel, self-absorbed idiots.
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