Fergus Jeffs

I don't know about you, but if someone asked me to name a movie about basketball, my mind would immediately go to Space Jam. Space Jam, the film where Michael Jordan has to team up with the Looney Tunes to help them win a basketball match against a team of space aliens that have stolen the mojos of notable NBA players. It may sound ridiculous, but it does make sense that I choose the film that features the most iconic basketball player of all time making his big-screen debut in the most successful basketball film of all time. Grossing $230 million in 1996 to become the 12th-highest-grossing film of the year, with an accompanying soundtrack album that went 6x platinum, and an official website that you can still visit today, Space Jam was a pop culture phenomenon.

Whether we're a fan of the genre or not, romance films are still seen by Hollywood as one of their most bankable genres. The genre has two significant spikes in popularity, first during the Hollywood Golden Age with the films of Fred and Ginger, and secondly during the 1980s and 1990s with films like Ghost, Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, Four Weddings & a Funeral and Notting Hill. During those spikes, specific trends or even cliches began to be formed. These cliches would soon start to be used again and again with each successful film released by Hollywood during said peak periods. Some of these cliches have carried over through the decades and are (un)fortunately still being used within the romantic genre today. This post will explore the most common ones.