7 Movies People Find Romantic But Are Actually Depressing

With Valentine’s Day comes every movie websites lists of Best Movies About Love, Most Romantic Movies Ever, Best Movies To Watch On Valentine’s, and then of course the accompanying lists to balance all this out, like Best Movies For Singles On Valentine’s Day and the like. Mostly though, we get to read and hear about the same movies year after year. And it’s sweet, and these movies are fun enough and awaken certain emotions that are expressed in a healthy way so long as we recognize the artifice of the thing that’s arousing them. And sometimes we’ll get a few movies earning mention that are legitimately and wholly lovely and romantic and heartwarming.

Darren Ruecker

Published: Feb 13, 2013 04:01 pm

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1) The Notebook

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Let’s start with one nearly unanimous pick for The Most Romantic Movie Of All Time™, The Notebook. Here we have a story of two elderly folks in a nursing home, a man reading from his notebook to a lady friend. It’s a lovely tale of a romantic summer, which plays out before our eyes, in which a bumpkin steals away a poor little rich girl. But of course her parents forbid her from seeing him and they’re separated and she takes up with some new guy even though bumpkin guy is all like “I wrote-cha ever’ day fer a yeer!” but her mom keeps the letters from her so she thinks he’s full of it.

But then they reunite and new guy gives her an ultimatum and obviously she picks bumpkin because she wants to get in on the Ryan Gosling train before everyone else wants a piece like they do now. Meanwhile, the old man in the nursing home is reading this to the old lady and she remembers that this is their story and she is cured of her dementia for a moment but then it comes back and she’s unresponsive again, so there’s nothing left to do but die in each other’s arms.

This doesn’t seem a little crazy to anyone else? Yes it’s sweet, and my keyboard is currently short-circuiting from my spontaneous weeping but is this really the pinnacle of a romantic relationship? That you die in each other’s arms? Or rather, that one of you dies, and the other commits suicide via heartbreak? This old man surely could have had some productive years left in him. He could have made his way around the nursing home and gotten with some reasonably doable ladies. He could have perhaps written his own memoirs, as these one were apparently written by his partner. Shouldn’t he get to have his say? I guess his identity is purely dependent on their relationship. So without her, he’s nothing.

To me, that doesn’t scream adorable, it points to some pretty severe dependency, and perhaps some mommy issues. Ryan Gosling in Drive is way more romantic.