Parent meeting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 23 (7468) dated 02/08/2023

The romantic comedy by Michael Jacobs “Meet the Parents” (Maybe I Do) is released. Watching the old guard in the person of Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and William H. Macy pull the blanket over themselves from a couple in love, which anyone could portray, was not without pleasure watching Yulia Shagelman.

The Hollywood romantic comedy genre has experienced two peaks in its history. The first was during the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, when elegant couples shone on the screens, throwing witty remarks at machine-gun speed – since sex and nudity were forbidden to show the Hayes code, all the erotica had to be melted down into dialogue by the characters. Then there was more freedom in the cinema, and rom-coms not only lost their positions, but gave way to first places in the box office table with films filled with action and not at all comic passions.

The second heyday began in the 1990s, with films such as When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Pretty Woman (1990). There are new queens and kings of rom-coms: Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Richard Gere, Hugh Grant. Films with their participation invariably became box office champions. The big studios put rom-coms back on stream and eventually reduced them to the same clichéd formula that plays out in completely disconnected situations. As a result, by the mid-2000s, the genre fell out of favor again. At the same time, works like Sex and the City and comedies by Judd Apatow deconstructed rom-com, replacing romance with pressing issues like contraception, impotence, and unemployment.

Attempts to revive rom-com in its classic form were made around the same time, but only streaming services succeeded, discovering that viewers missed the genre. With the help of Netflix, online platforms have been actively engaged in the production of comedies about the love of characters who have already solved all domestic problems, then they began to slowly return to the big screen. All the same stars are being shot in these films as before: only last year, for example, Ticket to Heaven with Julia Roberts and George Clooney and First Man with Jennifer Lopez were released.

“Meet the Parents” is also primarily attracted by the cast. With this couple, whose future together we’re supposed to be rooting for, there’s even an insignificant angle on the poster, although Michelle, who somehow very out of date longs to marry her doubtful boyfriend Allen (Luke Bracey), is played by Emma Roberts, who continues family traditions, Julia’s niece. But the main characters of this performance (the film was staged by the honored screenwriter and director-debutant in the full meter Michael Jacobs based on his own play), of course, are not them, but their parents. Fate brings two couples together – on the one hand, Howard (Geer) and Grace (Keaton), on the other hand, Sam (Maisie) and Monica (Sarandon) – at a moment when both marriages have long turned into appearances. They are ready to even maintain this appearance – of course, for the sake of the children, but when it turns out that the children have become a couple, the scenery is bursting at the seams. And now both parental couples will have to, if not save their relationship, then at least not completely spoil those that have developed with their offspring. Along the way, the star four will have the opportunity to demonstrate charisma (mainly Gere and Sarandon are responsible for it) and the ability to switch from humorous to sentimental mode (here Keaton and Macy come in), and the younger generation will try not to disturb them much.