The Break-Up: A Delightful Romantic Comedy - Essay Example

?The Break-Up: A Delightful Romantic Comedy Introduction The movie The Break-Up is a romantic comedy directed by Peyton Reed and starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. The movie tells the story of a couple who broke up their relationship due to incompatibility in their personalities and unfulfilled expectations. The movie is a light-hearted comedy with its characters, theme and storyline bringing a nice laugh to the audience. It will not be wrong to say that the movie fulfills most of the genre requirements of a romantic/screwball comedy as it tells the story of two completely incompatible people getting in a relationship. This relationship leads to development of hilarious events in the couple’s life which generates good amount of laughter from the audience. Hence, even though the movie The Break-Up discards some regular genre conventions of a romantic/screwball comedy through its romantic setting, eccentric characters and humorous situations, it still fulfills the genre requirements of romantic/screwball comedy. Genre requirement Screwball comedy movies are the movies that are based on the hilarious situations that arise from the interactions or the encounters between the people who are ‘opposite’ to each other in various ways. For a film to be categorized in the genre of screwball comedy, it requires to have the clash of the ‘opposites’, humorous situations, eccentric characters, and a storyline involving romantic and comedy themes. The movie The Break-Up has all these aspects. Clash of the ‘opposites’ The movie The Break-Up tells the story of two characters, Gary and Brooke, whose romantic relationship starts to fall apart due to the unfulfilled expectations from each other. The two lead characters in the movie, Gary and Brooke, are completely opposite to each other. Their personalities, their choices, their lifestyle, etc. differ drammatically. For example, Brooke is a perfectionist and conscious about cleanliness. On the other hand, Gary is least bothered about cleanliness and has the habit of leaving his clothes, accessories and video game stuff all around the house. While Brooke is perfect in her dressing, weight and appearance, Gary is careless about his appearance and is overweight and dresses casually. The ‘opposite’ patterns are visible in their behavior also. Brooke is physically active and ambitious person while Gary is extremely lazy and has a laid back attitude. Brooke cares about emotional support while Gary is zero in emotional quotient. He spends most of his time playing his video game and is irresponsible about his duties in house and in the relationship. These differences in their personalities give a comic feel to the movie. There are many funny situations in the movie which arise due to incompatibility between Brooke and Gary. For example, when Brooke asks Gary to help her in arranging the table and complaints about bringing just three lemons when she had asked for twelve, he alludes to her art profession and says that Michelangelo ended up doing a masterpiece as he worked alone and did not ask anyone else to help. Also, he says that when he was making the sixteenth chapel, he did not ask other guys to help him saying that he did the first fifteen chapels and now he needs their help. Gary tries to suggest to Brooke that she is a super achiever and she does things perfect when she does it alone. On this comment, Brooke reminds him that it was not the ‘sixteenth’ chapel, but ‘Sistine’ chapel that Michelangelo painted. This generates a great laughter. The incident where Brooke asks him to bring twelve lemons to decorate a vase and he brings only three also generates laughter. Criticizing Gary for bringing just three lemons, she says that Michelangelo was able to do a perfect job because when he asked for twelve brushes, he was given twelve brushes and not three. This conversation shows that Gary has absolutely no knowledge about art and painting world, which is passion of Brooke’s life. This shows the conflict in their likings. Also, Gary feels that things need not be perfect always and fails to understand Brooke’s love for perfection in arranging the home and keeping it clean and beautiful. This aspect of their nature brings some delightfully funny moments in the first fifteen minutes of the movie and makes the movie fit into the genre of romantic/screwball comedy. Humorous situations There are various humorous situations in the movie which arise from the unexpected turns of events. For example, Brooke decides to make Gary jealous by dating some other guy. She asks one guy to come home and pick her up for dinner thinking that Gary, on seeing him, will get extremely jealous. However, when the guy comes, he gets so engrossed in playing video game with Gary that he completely loses interest in date with Brooke. The unexpected turn of the event creates a humorous situation. The second extremely humorous situation in the movie arises when Gary gets beaten up by Brooke’s brother Richard. Audience thinks that Richard is a soft guy. When Gary asks him to leave and threats him, he makes some karate moves to beat Gary and brings him down to the floor. This unexpected turn of event generates a huge laughter. Also, when Brooke says that he is feeling embarrassed as he ‘got his ass kicked’ by Richard, Gary defends himself by saying “there is a really big gap between getting your ass kicked and having a dancing singing sprite woo you in trickery and then strike your throat before you know that you are even in the fight.” This also leads to a humorous situation. In this way, there are many moments in the movie which brings strong laughter. Eccentric characters The movie is full of eccentric characters. Richard, Marilyn Dean, Johnny Ostrofski, and Dennis Grobowski are completely eccentric in their behavior. However, the character that brings real funny moments in the movie is Marilyn Dean. Marilyn’s pompous behavior, her talking style and her jerky physical movements bring a delight to the movie. She has her own painting displayed in the art gallery. Her art gallery is shown displaying some unusually funny art pieces which make the audience laugh. Moreover, her attitude of being a great artist and running a great art gallery, when actually it is an average, brings delight to the movie. In this way, the eccentric characters in the movie make the movie fun to watch. At the same time, the movie has dared to discard some usual conventions that are common to the genre of romantic/screwball comedy. Genre conventions that are discarded The movie The Break-Up even though fits in the genre of romantic/screwball comedy, has discarded a major convention associated with the genre. The genre convention that is discarded in the movie is the idea of ‘happy ending’ or ‘living’ happy forever.’ The movie ends with Brooke and Gary parting their ways and leading their own lives. In the end, it is shown that Brooke meets Gary on her way to a meeting. They talk casually like friends and exchange few words. Even though they are shown turning back and looking at each other while leaving, it does not emphasize that they are going to get together again. This is because they both seem pretty happy with their break-up. They are not shown emotionally or psychologically disturbed with the break-up. Hence, one of the most important genre conventions of romantic/screwball comedies, that is ‘happy ending,’ which usually comes with couple getting together and’ living happily every after,’ is discarded in this movie. This change seems to have hurt the success of romantic comedy as it leaves the audience feel that they have wasted their time. A happy ending brings great satisfaction to the audience. After all, romantic comedies are expected to be dream like. Conclusion The discussion above shows that even though the movie The Break-Up has discarded one of the most important genre conventions of romantic/screwball comedies, i.e. ‘living happily ever after,’ it still fulfills the genre requirements of romantic comedy. Through unexpected turn of events, eccentric and funny characters, humorous situations and funny clashes between Brooke and Gary, the movie fulfills all the genre requirements of romantic/screwball comedies. Work Cited The Break-Up. Dir. Peyton Reed. Per. Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Joey Adams, and Judy Davis. Universal Pictures, 2006. Film. Read More