Not for a single delusional second did I believe that Jack Nicholson‘s Melvin Udall and Helen Hunt‘s Carol Connelly had a snowball’s chance in hell of actually working out as a couple, but I so loved that moment when Melvin tells Carol that she “makes [him] want to be a better man” that I suspended my disbelief.
In Billy Wilder‘s Sabrina (’54), the idea of Humphrey Bogart‘s Linus Larrabee somehow filling the heart and soothing the soul of Audrey Hepburn‘s Sabrina Fairchild for a decade or two…no way in hell. The age difference alone (Bogart was around 55, Hepburn in her mid 30s) said “forget it.”
At the close of North by Northwest, I could imagine Cary Grant‘s Roger O. Thornhill and Eva Marie Saint‘s Eve Kandall giving it a go and maybe lasting for a decade or so. Who knows?
What other romantic couples seem good to go or not? I realize we’re talking about a vast number of potential relationships — choose and pick as your whims may suggest.