embarrassing dreamboats, a history

In honor of Valentine’s Day I have compiled a list of people that I’ve had aching, albeit embarrassing, crushes on.  Yes, I readily admit to crushing on dorks, people you wouldn’t necessarily think of as “attractive,” as well as fictional characters and the like. In fact, the majority of the people I crush on are not your typical “Ashton Kutcher/Zac Efron/Insert popular male actor here” types. I’m not saying that I don’t find Ashton and Zac unattractive, but given the choice, yeah, I might just choose someone else. I have no shame. Well, maybe a little.

But you know what?  Sometimes the best kind of crush is the unsuspecting kind.

Let’s take a journey back…

The Vow, among other things

As you may know, The Vow is coming out for Valentine’s Day this year -and no, it’s not a Nicholas Sparks book made into a movie. Apparently it’s “inspired by true events,” but that could mean that there was a girl who lost her memory and she was married. I don’t know.

Anyway, this film is about a girl (Rachel McAdams) who is married to a guy (Channing Tatum), and everything about their life together is all magical and butterflies, that is until they get into a car accident and she forgets that she even has a husband. So pretty much I’m going to assume that the rest of the film is him trying to win her back through romantic gestures (watch the trailer on YouTube).

Now, I have nothing against these kinds of movies, I mean, other than that they display sickeningly cute stories that are unattainable to us simple, real folk. For one, girls in real life usually don’t look like Rachel McAdams. Two, men in real life usually don’t look like Channing Tatum (or at least have the body he has). Three, both men and women aren’t ever as charming as they are in the movies; call me a cynic but I’d like to think of myself as a realistic kind of gal. I’m not saying that there aren’t some adorable couples out there that seem to be pretty close to the couple portrayed in The Vow, but believe me, I know a helluva lot more who are seriously dysfunctional compared to McAdams and Gosling -I mean, Tatum.

So… Romantic comedies. One time I took a film class in high school and one of the movie genres we looked at was the romantic comedy, and my teacher at the time told us that he had chosen the movies he did because he had an aversion to romantic comedies, or as he called them, chick flicks. I actually really liked this teacher and I thought he was hilarious, and don’t worry, he wasn’t some creepy bachelor against love -he was actually expecting a baby at the time, but he did express the feelings that so many men have towards romantic comedies, or as they like to call them, chick flicks.

But here’s the thing, not all romantic comedies are chick flicks, and not all chick flicks are romantic comedies. Um, Beaches anyone? That s*** was not funny, but it is definitely a movie that only women usually enjoy. Or take His Girl Friday, one of the movies my teacher picked for his romantic comedy genre -this movie isn’t a chick flick. Men enjoy it too. I think more classic movies like HGF are in the rom com category rather than the chick flick/rom com category.

The other rom com that my teacher chose was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is one of my favorite movies. ESOTSM is a movie that is definitely a rom com and not a chick flick. It’s quirky and romantic without being overtly romantic, subtly romantic -sneaky romantic, maybe.

I think that’s the main difference -that rom coms are sneaky in the way that the fit romance into the plot, whereas chick flicks are all about the gooey, butterflies-in-the-stomach type of romance -they lay it all out for you. But here’s the real tricky thing, some movies qualify as the subtle and cerebral type of romance -rom coms- but at the same time, men would probably hate renting them, for whatever reason. Like Sliding Doors, I like that movie because it’s cute but not too cute. The plot isn’t just romance, it’s about a woman finding herself. But at the same time, there is a good deal of romance and relationship talk, not to mention the fact that  men would probably not enjoy it much either. I don’t know why, but whenever there’s a charming man with an accent, guys don’t seem to like it. I think they find it threatening.

Anyway, as much as we all claim to dislike rom coms and how they stretch reality, isn’t that why we go to the movies? To escape from reality?