Did They Live Happily Ever After?
Musings On Whether These Five 90s Romance Film Couples Made It Through the Decades.
It is one of the most spectacular themes in all of cinema. Two unsuspecting individuals, perhaps hapless and disheartened in life, find their paths colliding into a serendipitous and magical possible new romance. The scenes of brushed hair and shared kisses(or other possible R-rated inclusions) bring audiences to lighthearted laughter and budding tears of joy. Viewers are perhaps briefly enamored with enough conviction to revisit their most sincerely held beliefs. To name just a few of these:
“True love can be found,”
“Love buds in the most unexpected of moments,”
“Love truly does make the world go round.”
But sadly, most romance films end when the genuine relationship is just beginning to bud. Viewers get that fairy-tale uplifting sensation for just a few moments before their minds start reeling “Will their romance really last?” In real life(and even in fiction and film), we know that many romances never really get too far(most break-ups are far less tragic than Othello or Romeo and Juliet, thank goodness). Let’s consider the epic romances from many nineties romance films(that seems a remarkable decade for the genre), and reexamine whether or not those illustrious love stories were fit to make it after the big screen closing.
Pretty Woman (1990)
Okay, so we are certainly starting with a romance that was not exactly a happy-go-lucky family hit. Rich billion-dollar venture capitalist Edward Lewis(played by Richard Gere) picks up a not-so-legal moonlighter Vivian Ward(enter Julia Roberts). The two hit it off over a week as Mr. Lewis seeks to finalize his latest corporate acquisition and Miss Vivian accompanies him around Hollywood. If viewers can bite their tongue at the X-rated scenes and some other less-than-ideal social or cultural tropes(we’ll leave those in-depth critiques aside for another time perhaps), they really start to root for the wonderfully-fated couple.
Aside from the film showing Gere and Roberts both at their greatest and in their primes, the thing is both characters bring out the best in each other and rescue one another from destructive paths. Mr. Lewis has a change of heart about his dollar-sign company-chasing practices and Vivian decides to leave her ill-fated lifestyle to go back to school and start a new chapter. Spoiler alert they do reunite after a temporary estrangement at the film’s end(all of these films have a climatic final reunion of some sort), but what about the long term? Many speculators guessed they actually did not make it. Let’s face it, an aspiring billionaire certainly pushing 45 meets a young Hollywood girl still not quite 25 who taught him how to enjoy basking shoeless in the green grass. And they what, get married and start a family as Vivian goes to college and Edward starts a nonprofit business education agency? Isn’t exactly Jane Austen now, is it? But you never know, they could have lived happily ever after. Real-life love stories of more epic proportions blossom all the time, right?
As Good As It Gets (1997)
“You make me want to be a better man.” Who wouldn’t be enchanted by such sincere words? These are the epic lines Jack Nicholson’s character Melvin Udall professes to Helen Hunt’s character Carol Connelly. But what if Udall is plagued with dark monsters of mental illness that leave him verbally attacking anything that moves(and actually physically hurling a dog down a garbage chute)? But that is exactly what makes the romance — and film — so remarkable(as well as both Nicholson’s and Hunt’s performances that landed them Academy Awards). What the Manhattan waitress Connelly did for bestselling writer Melvin Udall was motivate him to face the monsters of his illness and isolation. The film shows him paying for a personal doctor to treat Connelly’s son, taking care of his neighbor Simon’s dog, and eventually letting Simon stay in his very home. Udall’s greatest feat is to try and win the heart of Connelly, a hard-working single mother who has been unlucky in love — and life — for far too long.
The uphill track of the movie’s plot is successful even as the film does not sugarcoat anything. Without any spoiler alert, Udall and Connelly do end up in a happy moment together at the end. But what happens a week out, a month, a few years? A lot of obstacles exist in any relationship, but this one seems to carry quite a few extras. Viewers will remember Melvin’s rough manner and unsettling OCD, Carol’s demands as a single parent and stressful job, and that whole matter of at least a quarter-century of an age difference. Will the romance fizzle out after a few reels of extraordinary and beautiful moments(and a whole lot of tense ones plus a few blundered kissing ones)? Or, will they grow to love one another more and fight the tides together? Viewers can only speculate and imagine these multiple possibilities, with many such ones being positive outcomes greater than anything imagined.
You’ve Got Mail(1998)
Enter 1997. The Internet has been a global big thing for a few years now. The '90s versions of social media and online networks, including instant messaging services, alluring chat rooms, and email, already consume hours of hundreds of millions of people’s day. Zoom in on New York City, and find Kathleen Kelly(Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) engaging in a secret online friendship. In spite of their busy lives and current long-term relationships, Fox and Kelly exchange emails and chat about any subject under the Sun — life in New York, literature, family events, and so on. Fox aids Kelly with her business woes(unbeknownst to either that Fox’s super-size book store is sucking away business from Kelly’s classic small business children’s bookstore) while Kelly confides her deeper longings, fears, and dreams. All seems wonderful and lovely in cyberspace, but in real life, it’s quite the contrary.
When Joe Fox shows up at a coffee shop to finally meet up with Kathleen Kelly, he’s shocked to see it is the small-time children’s bookstore owner but makes an effort to meet with her nonetheless. Angry at Fox’s role in jeopardizing her family’s generations-old business, Kelly all but forces him out of the shop before he can reveal his secret online persona. Hope seems lost for the romance. It is not until Fox, living on a boat after leaving his girlfriend Patricia, realizes how rare his connection with Kelly really is. He then partakes on a mission to win her over(and recently single and jobless Kelly is in need of a knight in shining armor).
The film would not have reached its plot resolution if Fox had not won Kelly’s heart, so no spoiler alert to say that the end is an embrace of two souls who have come to know each other well. But we do not see what happens next, and it appears many obstacles may stand in their way. There is that whole “you put me out of business thing.” There is a very profound class divide and social disconnect(the relationship would raise a lot of eyebrows in the couple’s disparate public circles). Plus, younger generations may not find such a match made in yesterday’s social media spaces a bright thing anyway(some social media cat-and-mouse games today are coined as “catfishing”). And how will Fox make up for putting Kelly’s multi-generational, enchanting slice-of-fantasy children’s bookstore out of business? Will his family’s corporation fund a Shop-Around-The-Corner printing press to publish Kelly’s children’s books? Will Fox start to branch out in helping small bookstores flourish with a cosponsorship rather than the acquisition method? Only time will tell if these major hurdles can be jumped in a way that helps their relationship blossom.
The Wedding Singer(1998)
Of all the films explored, many may agree with me that this film’s magical romance would be the one most certain to last forever. I mean, seriously, Robbie Hart (Adam Sammler) and Julia Sullivan (Drew Barrymore) would have the Facebook or Instagram accounts you’d look up in 2023 to see a couple still side-by-side in happy portraits with flocks of children and grandchildren now all around(and with decades still ahead to enjoy). (No spoiler alert intended but the wedding scene only guaranteed as much).
Come on, Hart even jumps on a plane to Las Vegas to chase down his love Sullivan before she marries her not-as-admirable-as-he-seems fiancee Glenn Gulia. He plays a song he wrote from his heart for the whole plane to hear, and they both professed their love for one another. That is enough to utterly change the plot twist as to why Julia was jumping a plane to Vegas with Glenn to begin with. He was trying to outdo Robbie’s apparent betrayal of getting back together with his former fiancee Linda. We never do know what happened to Glen(he probably just buried his bruised ego in a few cocktails in Vegas’ finer bars before flying back to his New York mansion). Nor do we know what came of Robbie’s music career(did he make it very far with Billy Idol’s endorsement or did he end up working double shifts at the record store to support the family?). Even with these unknown details, we can at least have high levels of certainty that Robbie and Julia did live happily ever after.
Notting Hill(1999)
We will leave on a higher note as we examine one of the greatest romance hits from right at the turn of the millennium, Notting Hill featuring Julia Roberts as U.S. actress Anna Scott who through all but happenstance stumbles into the quaint life of London travel book store owner William Thacker(played by Hugh Grant). The film is quintessentially British cooked slightly over-easy for American viewers to fully savor, and much like Thacker’s legendary line after meeting multi-million dollar earning, award-winning actress Scott, is “surreal but nice” throughout. Plain ordinary English chap Thacker and Hollywood celebrity Scott realize that any romance between them would most likely end in disaster, but they fall in love anyway while fully enjoying every part of the journey.
Roberts and Grant both bring remarkable chemistry and play their parts as naturally as their real-life roles(Grant as the classical British icon and Roberts as the young Hollywood aficionado). The film is thus an enchanting classic that can continue to be revisited through the decades. Roberts’ character Scott predictably courts Grant’s William Thacker on her European glamour tours, and predictably drops him off like excess luggage on her way back to Hollywood(at least the second time it is at his own flat after a wondrous few additional surreal days lead to a horrible shakeup). The ending is enchantingly not so predictable, showing the everyday Thacker to be the one to win back over superstar Scott’s heart. This epic romance leaves viewers as certain as they can be that the couple will stay together. So brilliantly done, Thacker was able to win his love over just when she needed him most. And the end scene does show them getting married after all(among other miraculous happenings, but no spoiler intended). Perhaps this film (from many viewpoints) shows a model for how romantic comedy should be done. We are left with as little doubt as possible about the couple’s happy future, none of that “happily-ever-after for a moment” ambiguous tomorrow stuff.
So, we have explored just five of those classic ’90s romance films. A couple of the films’ romances are more likely to be genuine “happily-ever-afters” (hey, they get married). Others have a more hazy outlook. But even relationships that do not make it to “happily ever after” can leave lasting marks in the ever-shifting sands of time. Among countless others, these romance films examined remind us that each love story is unique and ever-wondrous in its own right. And love truly is one of the Cosmos’ greatest ever-numinous mysteries.
