The last recent rom-com I watched (re: politely forced) was Music and Lyrics, which was so amazingly terrible it even made the domineering rental-picker blush. One of the problems nowadays with this genre is an utter void of chemistry between the leads in favor of “mall hot” eugenics. Feh to that! Without even knowing the plot or director, the words “Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, epicly in love” is not really deserving of an eye-roll. Let them and their tears and their city-chic pets make out in the rain, sounds totally opposite-of-mall-hot to me.
EW’s Hollywood Insider reports that the two young and talented actors are in talks to star in the “anti-romantic comedy” 500 Days of Summer, with Deschanel in chats to play a girl who doesn’t believe in love, while Gordon-Levitt would play the guy who does, indeed, believe and must show her. Ooh la la. Cue Elvin Bishop’s drunktastic “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” from Boogie Nights on your WinAmp. Director Marc Webb, making a crossover from MTV music videos for Good Charlotte (blech), Ashley Simpson (blech) and Weezer (hi high school) to features, will helm the pic for Slashfilm fave Fox Searchlight. The script is by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber who, uhhh, wrote The Pink Panther 2.
Deschanel is climbing the Tinseltown ranks in major upcoming flicks like M. Night’s The Happening and Jim Carrey’s Yes Man, and just released a cutesy folk album with M. Ward called She & Him. She was also eye-lash-battingly great on the third season of Weeds. Gordon-Levitt is currently cashing in on Stephen Sommers’s G.I. Joe in the role of Cobra Commander and can next been seen, next week in fact, in the dismally reviewed Iraq War fable Stop-Loss.
Discuss: Mushy mushy. What movie got love right? Will these two peoples have chemistry on-screen? What star-crossed lover movie(s) made you grab the Pepto?
March 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
How about Deschanel in All the Real Girls? I found that to be fantastic.
March 21st, 2008 at 8:06 pm
All the Real Girls wasn’t exactly a romantic comedy.
March 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Zooey should have played Lois Lane.
That is all.
March 21st, 2008 at 8:58 pm
@ Scott
The “discuss” topic doesn’t have to be a rom-com, just a film that got the feelin’ right.
@ Joseph
Good choice.
@ Aaron
I agree.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
True Romance is classic. Clarence and Alabama got love right. I guess it’s technically not a “by the book” romantic comedy, but…there’s oodles of kung-fu watching, pie eating, comic book reading, cocaine stealing, purple Cadillac driving, bloody romance, and the Sicilian scene is pretty fucking comedic, IMO.
By the way, the She & Him album rocks my balls off. That is all.
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 am
What movie got love right? First thing that comes to mind is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
My choices for getting love right: First is Marty, one I’ve loved for a really long time. Then, one I just saw recently and thought was really spectacular, Children of a Lesser God.
On to hating on rom-coms. I, as much as any other person out there, HATE most romantic comedies. But that’s only because ‘true’ romantic comedies just don’t try to be anything else, and are destined to be crap. But then, there are others that emerge as something more. After all, it could be argued, Juno is a romantic comedy…
I really like Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt, and I would like to believe they would make good choices and not appear in something that doesn’t try to be anything more than your average romantic comedy. So I have hope.
On a side note, I went Imdb-ing while making this post, and I know nothing about the movie Gigantic other than that it stars Deschanel and Paul Dano. And I just got REALLY excited about that. Anyone?