From Hollywood With Love

December 15, 2021
An enthusiastic fan traces the evolution of modern romantic comedies. Beginning in 1989 with Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally..., the "most romantic rom-com of all time," first-time author Meslow's comprehensive film history focuses on 16 of the most significant of these character-driven films over the past three decades. Along the way, the author provides informative, in-depth "essays" on key performers--Meg Ryan, Hugh Grant, Adam Sandler, Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon, Will Smith--and insightful backstories about directors, writers, producers, and others who were also responsible for this genre's success. Regarding Pretty Woman, the author writes that the "confused, inefficient, eventually serendipitous development and production process is what ended up giving [the film] its unique texture." Love Potion No. 9 "set the template for the rom-com and rom-com-adjacent roles on which Bullock would build her career." In 1995, when the "full-blown cultural phenomenon" that was Four Weddings and a Funeral was nominated for a best-picture Oscar, it gave the genre more critical credibility. Waiting To Exhale proved that a rom-com based on a Black female writer's book and four Black actresses could reach a wide audience. In 1998, There's Something About Mary, the "raunch-com" written and directed by the Farrelly brothers, "expanded Hollywood's understanding about what a rom-com could look like." Three years later, writes Meslow, the "constant blizzard of skepticism around [Renee] Zellweger's casting" in Bridget Jones's Diary was "both premature and unwarranted, but it was also a reminder to the movie's creators that the stakes were perilously high." Now an established, successful genre, it could explore new territory--e.g., aging in Something's Gotta Give, a "vague hand-waving" over abortion in Knocked Up, and a "major and important step forward" with Asian American director Jon Chu's Crazy Rich Asians. Meslow predicts ups and downs in the future, like with any genre, but "real love stories never have endings." Included throughout are bits of trivia. A sprightly homage to a popular, seemingly evergreen film genre.

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December 15, 2021
Meslow, an entertainment writer and film critic, dates the beginning of what he calls the modern romantic-comedy era to 1984, when director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron had lunch together. That led to When Harry Met Sally, which prompted a steady stream of modern rom-coms over the next 20-odd years, until a variety of factors, especially movie studios shifting their focus to "massive, franchise-generating blockbusters," sent the genre into a downward spiral. But fear not: the rom-com didn't really go away, and it certainly isn't dead. It's just different. The films, as Meslow argues convincingly, have followed on the Reiner-Ephron model to become hipper, more ethnically diverse, less dependent on centuries-old stories with modern-day trappings. Also, streaming services like Netflix now offer rom-coms a new home, so they aren't competing directly with the Hollywood blockbusters on the big screen. Meslow tells lots of engaging making-of stories (for example, how Pretty Woman was transformed from a fallen-woman tragedy into a Disney fairy tale), but it's his overarching theme, that romantic comedies are much more than lovey-dovey fluff, that really holds our interest.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 3, 2022
Journalist Meslow examines in his breezy debut the last 30 years of romantic comedy films, from 1989’s When Harry Met Sally to 2018’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. A chapter on Pretty Woman reveals that it started out as a grittier drama entitled Three Thousand, while in a consideration of Hugh Grant, Meslow writes that the actor “hides the amount of work he puts into his performances under a thick layer of irony.” My Big Fat Greek Wedding, meanwhile, was so successful upon its 2002 release because of how “natural and grounded” it was “in an era of rom-coms that were increasingly untethered from reality.” Along the way, Meslow makes good points about a lack of diversity in the rom-com world but devotes little space to non-heterosexual film examples, and while the chapters are individually satisfying, they don’t build to make a bigger case. Still, romance fans will find plenty to enjoy in this punchy retrospective. Agent: Noah Ballard, Curtis Brown.

January 1, 2022

Entertainment writer Meslow's first book is a delightful and humorous love letter to the romantic comedy flick. Meslow's study sticks to a specific set of criteria--movies made between 1989 and the early 2020s that achieved critical and commercial success, were influential, and revealed something unique about culture or the romantic comedy genre. He explores 16 films, many of which spawned sequels or "spiritual successors." The book begins with the 1989 meeting between Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron that eventually led to When Harry Met Sally and launched a wave of rom-coms in the '90s. Meslow also provides tantalizing tales of script overhauls (Pretty Woman was originally a darker tale that involved drug addiction), casting controversies (the choice to cast the American Ren�e Zellweger as the British Bridget Jones), and tensions between costars (Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz apparently had a rocky relationship on the set of My Best Friend's Wedding). Meslow notes that Hollywood has been slow to offer more inclusive and racially diverse romantic comedies, but he argues that the commercial success of movies like 2018's Crazy Rich Asians (the first Hollywood film since The Joy Luck Club to feature a cast made up primarily of people of Chinese descent) illustrates that audiences are eager for movies that reflect a diversity of experiences. VERDICT Fans of the popular but often under-appreciated genre of romantic comedy will appreciate Meslow's book, which offers insight on the development of landmark films and how some of Hollywood's biggest names launched their careers.--Lisa Henry

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