A movie should present its characters with a problem and then watch them solve it, not without difficulty. So says an old and reliable screenplay formula. Countless movies have been made about a boy and a girl who have a problem (they haven't slept with each other) and after difficulties (family, war, economic, health, rival lover, stupid misunderstanding) they solve it by sleeping with each other. Now we have a movie about two homosexuals that follows the same reliable convention.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- This quote critiques a standard screenplay formula where characters face obstacles to resolve a romantic conflict through intimacy. It notes this trope applies even to stories about homosexual relationships.
- In plain terms
- Many movies follow a pattern where romance resolves through sex after problems arise.
- What can you take from it?
- Recognize repetitive storytelling patterns in film.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How predictable are modern romances?
- Does the resolution matter more than the journey?
Another view
Not all films relying on this formula lack originality or depth.
More from Roger Ebert
It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him.…
Permalink to quote #56 I could list some Japanese films illustrating this, but the last thing the audience for Memoirs of a Geisha wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorg…
Permalink to quote #58 By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies... Gladiator lacks joy. It employs depression …
Permalink to quote #55
Related quotes
The movie is an exhausted retread of the old campus romance gag where the pretty girl almost believes the lies of the reprehensible schemer, instead of trustin…
Roger EbertRoger Ebert quote #23 What concerns me fundamentaly is a meteoric burlesk melodrama, born of the immemorial adage love will find a way.
E. E. CummingsE. E. Cummings quote #37 Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. …
Roger EbertRoger Ebert quote #47