In a time when cheap romantic comedies are thriving on Netflix, one of their most-watched movies is a $120 million, all-star Hollywood rom-com disaster from a bygone era.
In a time when cheap romantic comedies are thriving on Netflix
NFLX, one of their most-watched movies is a $120 million, all-star rom-com disaster from a bygone era.
Nia Long and Omar Epps’ Fatal Affair is still Netflix’s top-rated attraction ahead of both Charlize Theron’s The Old Guard (now in third place) and Katherine Langford’s Cursed (an episodic “Lady of the Lake” origin story based on a Frank Miller comic). Netflix is boasting that The Old Guard will have 74 million viewers by its first month. That said, if a cheapie like Fatal Affair (a classic example of a race-swapped genre throwback) consistently remains ahead of a buzzy $70 million action movie and a presumably expensive “Game of Thrones… for teens!” fantasy show, well, that has to factor into Netflix’s thinking. Unless they are throwing $200 million at the Russo Brothers for a Chris Evans/Ryan Gosling spy actioner just to show that they can.
The fourth-most watched movie (behind those two and The Lorax) is How Do You Know, an infamous mega-bomb from a decade ago. The $120 million-budgeted Tri-Star release, written and directed by James L. Brooks, starred Reese Witherspoon as a softball player (unfairly?) cut from the team who has to choose between a “perfect on paper” baseball player (Owen Wilson) and a less conventional but potentially more appropriate love interest (Paul Rudd). The film is further complicated by a corporate crime sub-plot, whereby Rudd’s father (Jack Nicholson, in his final performance) gets the company in legal jeopardy but wants his son to take the rap. It’s not a very good film, we critics were right in 2010, but it does stand out as an artifact of a bygone era.
Like a lot of older movies, How Do You Know has kinda/sorta aged well merely by virtue of just being allowed to be a movie. It’s not trying to set up a franchise or capitalize on an IP and it’s not trying to appeal to all potential demographics. Sure, it (like any number of male-directed rom-coms) has moments that are/were considered “problematic” today, but there is a certain nostalgia that comes from watching a ridiculously over-budgeted (but non-action/fantasy) Hollywood movie that’s just filled with big movie stars, strong production values and a somewhat singular original narrative that merely exists unto itself.
