Posts from July 2013

I really want to see a mainstream Hollywood movie, preferably with stars in the lead roles, that goes basically like this:  a couple of single people meet cute, become very good friends, meet and fall in love with other people, and stay very good friends.  The End.

It’s been pointed out to me that this is basically the Harry Potter series, which causes me to applaud J. K. Rowling all over again…but note that I said “movie”, not “movie series”.  That is to say, while I love that Rowling resisted having Harry and Hermione hook up, I’d like to see that same sort of arc played out over ninety minutes, not nineteen hours.

Here are some other limits I would place on my ideal movie:

• The friends never have sex.  Not even drunken one-night-stand sex.
• In fact, they never even date.  They hang out and do stuff together, but the way that people hang out and do stuff with people they aren’t dating.
• Related: neither of them develops a crush on the other.  Their love for each other is that of really good friends, period.
• Possibly optional: show through various grace notes in the scenes that while these are great friends, they wouldn’t work well as a romantic couple, and that they realize and are totally fine with that.
• Their friendship is not broken or externally threatened.  It’s okay if they argue and even fight from time to time — friends often do.  Misunderstandings are part of any relationship.  Show those, but don’t make it into some kind of world-shattering drama or seem like they’re going to part ways.  Just normal human struggles.
• Related: neither of them hates or is jealous of their friend’s choice of romantic partner, and vice versa.  I’m not going to insist they all four become super-best friends, but what we’re looking for here is healthy (if imperfect) relationships all the way around.

In a lot of ways, this would look like When Harry Met Sally… without the sex and the stuff at the end.  I’m not saying it’s exactly that, because it’s been a long time since I saw that movie and there may be other things that would need to change.  But, in a broad sense, that.

Why do I want this?  Because I’m really tired of seeing movies (and TV shows and video games and on and on) that essentially insist that any two people who could potentially fall in love must fall in love.  Or even just lust.  Those things are not requirements of all human interaction, and I’d like to see — even if it’s just once — something that looks like a rom-com, but ends up being something a lot more interesting and true to life.  Even more, I’d like my children to see it.  They see it in real life, but a little extra backup wouldn’t hurt.

If anyone knows of a movie that meets these criteria, whether Hollywood-based or not, I’d love to know about it.

• If Harry Befriended Sally was published on Wednesday, July 10th, 2013.
• It was assigned to the Culture and Parenting categories.
• There have been sixteen replies.