Watching Romcoms After Valentine’s Day

By Lori Perkins

I love a good (and sometimes even a bad) romcom, but there’s something not right for me about watching romcoms on Valentine’s Day, so I saved up viewing Marry Me!, I Want You Back and Love and Leashes (yes, this IS a romcom), until the days after. I think I enjoyed them more than if I had seen them before or on Valentine’s Day because it’s sort of like and after-Valentine’s-Day sale.

The one that made me teary was Marry Me!, the Jennifer Lopez/Owen Wilson vehicle about an international pop star who is cheated on and impulsively marries a math teacher in front of an audience of millions. I liked the set up (and I like J Lo in rom coms), but I was dubious about the chemistry between Wilson and Lopez, but it works. Like I wrote, I cried at the end.

Next up was I Want You Back, a Jenny Slate/Charlie Day romcom about two losers whose more fabulous significant others break up with them and they team up to get their former partners back. I am not a fan of Jenny Slate and have never had a remotely romantic thought about Charlie Day, but the writing was so good that it made me miss Nora Ephron. It surprised me, which is always a pleasure.

Love and Leashes is a Korean BDSM romcom which seemed so intriguing that I had to watch. Even though I had read that this was an office romance, I think I was hoping it was a female dom version of Fifty Shades of Grey. If that’s what you are looking for, it will disappoint, but when I let go of my expectations I found this to be an oddly charming romcom with very different pacing than American romcoms.