CONVENTIONS OF A ROMANTIC COMEDY FILM GENRE

Romantic Comedies (Rom Coms) are sometimes classified as ‘Chick Flicks’. This is because a large part of their audience consists of a female audience. It is known as a hybrid genre which means it has many different conventions which are true of comedy movies and romantic movies, many are just taken from one genre but others are found in the middle ground of the two.

They are normally light hearted and humorous, focused around romantic ideals. The basic plot is normally centred around two characters, normally a man and a woman. They part ways because of some kind of obstacle, whether it be an argument or various others. The ultimately reunite and fall in love by the end of the film. Often the story is based around them being hesitant to becoming romantic because they do not believe the other likes them or one of them already has a partner. One of the biggest codes which appears within Rom Com films is that screenwriters and directors will make it obvious that the two characters are meant to be together. The audience will also want the two characters to get together because they also believe they are meant to be together.

Evolution and Sub Genres
Romantic comedies have begun to vary from the classic conventions and tradional structure to create new and interesting forms of the romantic comedy. This has created a varity of sub genres which all have their own set of conventions. They still follow the classic storyline and plot about a happy love story.

Extreme Circumstances - Some Romantic Comedies have adopted extreme or strange circumstances in which the main characters find themselves. An example of this is the Warm Bodies film where the main protagonist, a zombie, falls in love with a human girl. This type of extreme circumstance adds originality to the text and makes it stand out from the other romantic comedies.

Flipping Conventions - Other Romantic Comedies also flip the standard conventions of a Rom Com film. An example of this would be the film 500 Days of Summer where the two main characters do not in fact end up together as suggested in the typical romantic comedy conventions. 

Serious Elements - Other remakes of the romantic comedy genre include films which involved similar elements to classic rom com films but explore more adult theses such as marriage, responsibility and sometimes disability. An example of this would be Knocked Up which deals with the issues of responsibility when it comes to an unintended pregnant. And seriously discusses this throughout the film. Another example is the film Silver Linings Playbook which deals with the effects of mental illness and unrequited love which is never resolved. 

Here is an outline of some of the codes and conventions of a romantic comedy:

• A typical 'boy meets a girl' storyline scenario, these will be the two main protagonists of the movie (true of the romantic genre)
• Inevitability a happy ending, ending in a relationship or a wedding (romantic genre)
• Funny sexual innuendos (comedy genre)
• Most of the time the cenreal character is a female and we see the film from her point of view, this is because the target audience consists of females (true of the romantic genre)
• Normally set in an urban enviromentment, possibly centred around a work place, this makes it believable and helps the audience to identify with the characters (true of both romantic and comedy films)