Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Real life is just not like a rom-com
AH, VALENTINE’S Day. The holiday of love. It seems like everywhere you look, happily coupled pairs are holding hands, scattering rose petals and creating rambling posts on Instagram claiming they have the #bestboyfriendever.
You’ve probably dreaded this day for months as it slowly crept upon on you like Count Orlock in Nosferatu.
You’re probably thinking of doing what we’ve all thought of doing when we’ve been single on Valentine’s Day: putting on those footie pyjamas you bought as a joke but secretly like, and purchasing and binge-watching every romantic comedy on Netflix. Don’t. Do. It. Nothing will make you feel worse about your love life than staying home to watch Ryan Gosling in anything.
(Except The Big Short. That will just make you feel bad about the state of the economy.)
Here are five ways romantic comedies have lied to you. grown up, realised they had nothing in common as teenagers and never thought about him again. Years later, when she found out he built a house for her, she would get a restraining order.
Pretty Woman lied to you. Can you name any of Heidi Fleiss’s many call girls who ended up with their Johns? No. Because it doesn’t happen. Here’s how Pretty Woman would have gone in real life: Julia Roberts’s character would have taken a selfie of Richard Gere snorting cocaine off her body and sent it to TMZ in return for $100 000.
We’ve seen enough Lifetime movies to know that studentteacher relations usually end in jail time. But in Never Been Kissed, it’s just a case of starcrossed lovers.
A copy editor (Drew Barrymore) gets an assignment to go undercover as a new pupil at a high school, where she thinks her English teacher (Michael Vartan) is hot stuff.
For various legal and logical reasons, this adult woman is unable to pretend to be a 16-year-old and later has her “first” kiss with her former teacher in a stadium and everyone cheers.
Dirty Dancing got it wrong. While we all love the idea of sexy Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) rescuing our angsty teenage selves from the boredom of a family holiday, that never happens.
And if the guy you’re sleeping with gets fresh with your dad, he will probably pummel him and then you’ll drive back home in silence.
In Knocked Up, career-oriented Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a stoner (Seth Rogen).
He ends up being a pretty great guy, but come on. In real life, she’d exercise her right to choose, knowing that he would’ve missed child-support payments and she’d end up working two jobs to pay that kid’s way through university.
Your most successful relationship could very well look nothing like what you dreamed of as your “perfect” romance.
Most of the time, real life is better than anything an underpaid script doctor could dream up at a Starbucks. – Washington Post 6 whole prawns, butterflied in the shell, press open flat, vein removed 50g desiccated coconut 50g bread crumbs