Running in romcoms–it’s everywhere
The "run to profess your love" cliché shows up in nearly every romcom
With the cosy holiday season upon us, it’s time to bring out the cheesiest romcoms you can find–even if you’ve already seen them a dozen times. And once you start rewatching, you’ll notice something YouTuber Nerdwriter1 observed: there’s an awful lot of running in romcoms.
In a recent video essay, Nerdwriter1 stitched together a five-minute montage showing just how often the “sprint to profess your love” cliché shows up onscreen. There are too many to count: Love Actually, Bridget Jones’ Diary, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, When Harry Met Sally… even The Graduate is in there (not really a romcom, but we’ll allow it). At some point, every main character breaks into an all-out run, with dramatic music in the background, to track down their true love. And these are all just the classics–the video doesn’t even begin to get into the corny Hallmark movies.
Unrealistic, but necessary
Take The Holiday, for example. (Spoiler alert–but it came out in 2006, so hopefully you’re already familiar.) Cameron Diaz is in a limo on a snowy country lane, heading back toward her love interest (played by Jude Law). She asks her driver to go faster, but loses patience, jumps out and starts running–through the snow, smiling the entire way–while wearing a long winter coat, jeans and heels. Never mind that there is zero urgency, considering she was about to leave the country, and he’s the one who actually lives there. Does it make sense? No. Is it realistic? Not in the least. Do we love it anyway? Of course.
As Nerdwriter1 puts it: “There’s just something deeply comforting about seeing people on a quest for love run in straight lines toward meaning that they’re absolutely certain of … In reality, lines aren’t so straight. But who can begrudge us a few fantasies here and there?”
In actuality, we found we were less interested in Nerdwriter1’s theories about why people running toward love is so irresistible and more interested in trying to identify each movie as it rolled by. But the theories have merit. (If you want more memorable/ridiculous running scenes in movies, there’s also Forrest Gump, Rocky II and Rocky III and just about every Tom Cruise movie ever made.)
Shoutout to ultra-trail Substacker Brendan Leonard (a.k.a. Semi-Rad) for linking the video in his latest newsletter.
