Self-importance is rapidly and dangerously on the rise in our culture. Spoiled socialites are given television shows to whine about boys gossip over childish scandals and prattle about clothes and shoes. Everyone wants to be a star or at least dance with one. The feelings plights and needs of others are easily thrown aside without a second thought. “Me” is paramount.
One mechanism of cinema is to serve as a historical and cultural barometer: a time capsule of ideals passions and norms. Whether viewing the counter culture of the 1960s through the eyes of “Easy Rider” or the struggle of inner city youth before 1900 in “Boyz ‘n the Hood films provide us with a certain context that goes beyond what can be written in textbooks and historical journals.
Film can purvey sentiment, struggle, revolution— steps forward and steps back. Film can help us understand entire movements at the most basic emotional level.
It is in this capacity that The Romantics” is so perfectly and accurately successful. It is also why it is so disappointing frustrating and downright bad in every other way. “The Romantics” is the pinnacle work from for and about the self-important generation of today. It is about people who have been told their entire lives that the real Golden Rule isn’t “Do unto others…” but rather “You are special.” It is a self-important and pretentious work filled to the brim with narcissistic and selfish characters.
The film tells the oh-so-tragic tale of seven friends all Yale graduates who reunite for the wedding of two of their own. These successful well-educated attractive and very obviously wealthy people proceed to spend the entirety of the movie whining and complaining about how terrible their lives are. Their worlds are so cordoned off their perspectives so blinded that the great tragedies of their existence are unpublished novels sputtering acting careers and generally feeling uninspired.
The irony of it all is how uninspired the film itself is. The main conflict of the film if you can even call it that is that Laura (played by Katie Holmes) used to date Tom (played by Josh Duhamel) and she is still in love with him. But Tom who probably still loves Laura is the groom at the aforementioned wedding set to marry Laura’s old roommate Lila. It reads like immature middle school gossip but is so arrogantly and pretentiously presented as great philosophical drama. The plot characters and even most of the scenarios that arise throughout the film seem rehashed from any one of the Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl romantic comedies of late. But the difference is that those films are entertaining because they embrace the sheer absurdity of it all while “The Romantics” tries so painfully hard to convince the audience that it has groundbreaking emotional and intellectual depth. It is utterly frustrating and miserably and here’s that word again self-important.
But even beyond this epic thematic and tonal failure the film only continues to fall apart. The shaky-camera cinematography style tries too hard to add grit to a glossy shallow story and the music seems borrowed from a “Twilight” fan video on YouTube. The ensemble of actors is made up of typecast celebrities trying too hard to prove to the audience and themselves that they can do something different. But they can’t. Katie Holmes Josh Duhamel Elijah Wood Anna Paquin Malin Ackerman and Adam Brody all remain “that one guy/girl” from “that one thing” that is most definitely not this movie.
Some day in the future people will watch this film and be able to understand how pervasive the idea of “me myself and I” is in today’s culture. Here’s hoping they do so with embarrassment and shame not celebration and familiarity.