Thursday, February 4, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #343: Romance Tropes Edition - Fake Relationship

 



Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share your movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Romance Tropes Edition - Fake Relationship

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Hey it's February and it's time for the Romance Tropes Edition. Take a look at what's in store for the rest of the month. 
 
February 4 - Romance Tropes Edition: Fake Relationship
February 11 - Romance Tropes Edition: Friends to Lovers
February 18 - Romance Tropes Edition: Forbidden Love
February 25 - Romance Tropes / TMP Television Edition: Love Triangles
 

Today is the first of the Romance Tropes Edition which will run the whole of February and is something that I hope will be an annual edition. Until recently, I've been a big book snob and had avoided romance novels. Now I read quite a lot of them and they are so much fun. The Romance Tropes Edition is very much inspired by the sub-genres and popular tropes in the romance novels I've read. Today's theme is an extremely popular (Netflix's Bridgerton, a book adaptation, if you've seen it, it has this very trope) book trope; the premise usually has two characters for some reason or other pretend to be in a romantic relationship when they actually aren't but eventually fall in love due to spending so much time with each. Anyway Bridgerton is a TV series so it will not count. Here are my movie picks:

Wedding Date (2005)
A woman hires a male escort to pretend to be her date to her sister's wedding to make the best man who was her ex-fiance jealous. It's been a long time since I've seen this but I remember enjoying it. One I'd like to watch again
 
The Proposal (2009)
A boss gets her assistant to agree to marry her and they pretend to be engaged in order for her to
escape deportation.
I think this will be probably be popular this week since this is also one of the most successful romantic comedies ever. I didn't love it, but thought it was okay.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
A teen girl's secret love letters (ones that were never meant to be sent) get mysteriously mailed out to her crushes. To avoid being confronted by a neighbour (one of the receipients of the love letter) about the very letter, she engages in a fake relationship with another letter recipient who sees it as an opportunity to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. I love the book which was just super adorable and this is a great adaptation. It is charming, funny and the leads had great chemistry.
 
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12 comments:

  1. I swear everyone picked The Proposal besides me so far lol. I've seen all these of these but I can't say I'm huge fans of any of them, but romantic films can be a tough sell for me.

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    1. Since my choices are almost always more than 50 years old, I didn't pick The Proposal, either.

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    2. They are a tough sell for me too. Romantic films are cheap to make (which is why some TV channels churn out so many of those TV movies) but so hard to do well. I find a lot of them too sappy, cheesy and cringy to enjoy.

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  2. Nice picks! I remember liking The Wedding Date when it first came out too. I liked To All The Boys I've Loved Before - the cast and story is super cute though I haven't read the book. The Proposal is overrated to me. I've never really understood its popularity. A lot of the scenes make me cringe 'cause Ryan and Sandra were pretty mismatched.

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    1. Ryan and Sandra were pretty mismatched - I kinda agree. I think both actors have that sweetheart thing going on...which to me make it an odd casting...they should have gone for actors that were opposites.

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  3. The Wedding Date was okay, once.

    I feel the same way about The Proposal as you do. It was okay, Betty White was a delight but I've never gone back to it after that first time in the theatre. I much prefer Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping to this.

    I haven't seen the last but it sounds worth checking out.

    There were several more recent ones I thought of but I figured they would be popular today, they were, so I reached back for mine, not too far for my first but quite a bit for the other two.

    Picture Perfect (1997)-Kate Mosley (Jennifer Aniston) toils in a junior position at a big New York advertising agency and despite her competence cannot seem to get ahead. Turns out her boss feels she is too much of a free spirit and tells her he needs to see her commitment to settling down before she moves up in the company. So when she goes to a wedding and has a picture taken with a stranger named Nick (Jay Mohr) she passes him off as her fiancée earning her a promotion. Since he lives in Boston all is well with the deception until he becomes famous by saving a child from a burning building and her boss wants to meet him. On the spot she finds Nick and convinces him to play along but complications ensue. Bright, breezy romcom with a terrific cast.

    Come Live with Me (1941)-Viennese immigrant Johnny Jones (a ravishing Hedy Lamarr) is in danger of being deported unless she gets married pronto. The problem is that her wealthy boyfriend, publisher Barton Kendrick (Ian Hunter) is already married and wife Diana (Verree Teasdale) isn’t about to give him a divorce! By chance she meets broke writer Bill Smith (James Stewart) and proposes a marriage of convenience. Instantly smitten Bill goes along but has ideas of his own. Though they seem polar opposites Hedy and Jimmy make a most compatible couple.

    Hired Wife (1940)-To avoid a hostile takeover of his cement company CEO Stephen Dexter (Brian Aherne) proposes an in name only marriage to his super-efficient secretary Kendal (Rosalind Russell) so he can transfer his assets to her name. She consents but when the danger is passed and Stephen wants a divorce so he can return to his gold-digging former girlfriend Phyllis (Virginia Bruce) Kendal, who carries a torch for him, pulls all sorts of tricks and ploys to maintain the ruse. Roz was one of the queens of this sort of screwy comedies in the 40’s and she’s a vivacious delight here.

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    1. I saw Picture Perfect a long time ago. While I remember liking it, I don't actually remember the plot.

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  4. We match with The Proposal which I knew would be popular this week. I haven’t seen the other 2 but they sound sweet.

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  5. As one of those who loved it, I'm glad to see The Proposal so popular this week.

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    1. It's one of my favorites but I love anything Sandy B. is in.

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  6. I'm a sucker for anything with Sandra Bullock in. The Proposal is quite fun.

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  7. I didn't participate last week but just posted mine for this week. I probably would've picked The Proposal as well for fake relationship :)

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