We’re now in the age where people will not have lived through dial-up tones, landlines and late-night radio talk shows. The up-and-coming generation will not know the struggle of using the internet and a landline at the same time, which also means people won’t understand some of the best romantic comedies of all time.
Take Julia Roberts’ Runaway Bride. In the movie, a journalist is assigned to write an article about Roberts’ character who leaves all of her grooms at the altar. The movie could be solved with the use of Find My Friends. If the first groom had just turned on cell tracking, then maybe she could address her issues the first time. But then again, we wouldn’t get another movie with the dynamic duo of Richard Gere and Roberts.
Before the age of Facebook — or even its predecessor MySpace — there was no way of keeping tabs on people’s lives and who was in them. Had social media or even smartphones been invented, While You Were Sleeping would have been a 15-minute movie. In the film, Sandra Bullock’s character is mistaken for the fiancé of a man in a coma. The man’s family comes in and assumes Bullock is engaged to him. First off, it’s just baffling the family had no idea who the man’s finacé was, but also it would not have happened if Facebook were invented.
Snapchat’s map feature would have really come in handy in 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man. Both of them deal with the leading men cutting deals with over people, falling in love with the girl they’re supposed to woo and then going to a high school prom. With Snap Map, everybody could have seen who was in cahoots with whom. There would be now sneaking around. It’s good it didn’t exist, though, because we probably wouldn’t have gotten the huge romantic gesture by Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You.
The Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan rom-com Sleepless in Seattle has probably aged the worst of any ’90s love story. Ryan’s character literally falls in love with Hanks’ character after hearing him talk on late-night radio. The talk show, which is kind of like the Delilah Show if you remember that, helped the widower with his grief. Then, hundreds of women snail mail him letters — physical pieces of paper, people. That dude would have had so many women sliding into his DMs. When Ryan sends him a letter, she asks to see Hanks at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day, and let’s be honest, that is the least feasible part of the movie in a post-9/11 society.
The plots were much simpler in the ’80s and ’90s, which means rom-com directors of this era have to find ways to modernize the stories. It’s so hard to create a complex plotline when something in the film could be solved by checking social media. The shame in it all is 30 years from now, people won’t understand the beauty and simplicity of romantic comedies in the ’90s.
Georgia Davis is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. What is your favorite ’90s romantic comedy? Tell Georgia by tweeting her at @georgiadee35.
