Romantic comedies “seem to have fallen out of step with modern life,” writes N.Y. Daily News guy Joe Neumaier, the result being that “moviegoers are experiencing a kind of cinematic bed death when it comes to meet-cute flicks and affairs to remember.”
He mentions recent or soon-to-open examples like Catch and Release (a dud), Music and Lyrics, Daddy’s Little Girls and Starter for 10 (which I instantly dismissed after catching it at the Toronto Film Festival), but emphasizes that “audiences and romantic comedies are going through a bad patch, and it’ll take more than a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a crying jag” to forget The Wedding Date, Must Love Dogs , Just Like Heaven, the moderately detestable Failure to Launch and Woody Allen‘s disastrously bad Scoop.
There’s at least one romantic comedy I’ve seen that feels half in step with modern life, or at least a female sector of modern urban life — Zoe Cassavetes‘ Broken English (Magnolia Pictures), which played at Sundance ’07. Alas, Neumaier pays it no mind.