He's All That and the Evolution of Love Stories
The moral case for finding a way to fall in love again with romantic comedies.
All of us crave some kind of love.
It's a fundamental need that most of us understand at a very young age. Whether it's family love which makes you feel as if someone wants you to succeed, or the love of another person that you can build your own family with. There's almost no one who doesn't want to feel the warmth of someone else. A fact that people have been struggling with for countless generations. Which is why you have so many different depictions of love in so many different forms. Like the desire to feel the warmth of another person, we crave being able to see it happen in a book or on screen.
However, just like in a real relationship, keeping love fresh and interesting is incredibly difficult to do. As the culture changes, so does our idea of love. Obviously the most well known of these is Romeo and Juliet, the classic tragic love story. Everybody understands what it's like to have a teenage love that's all consuming and ultimately destructive. Thankfully, this isn't how most love stories end these days. Love is a lot more complicated and requires more effort.
In the 90s, love stories were particularly popular for the way in which they depicted more interesting stories. Ones that didn't necessarily focus on the male character's desire for a woman and their need to have them. It popularized the idea of a young woman who doesn't necessarily need a man to be complete but still finds love. She can achieve her dreams for herself while also finding someone who cares enough to try and help them towards it. Perhaps one of the most popular of the era was She's All That.
After the teenage romantic comedy heyday of the 90s, there was an effort to deconstruct the whole romantic comedy genre in order to give it more depth and emotion. As it did though, we ended up seeing these types of films become less popular. It became too over saturated and people weren't really able to figure out what a good romance was. More recently, there's been a revival of the genre and of an attempt to romanticize movies and love stories in particular.
With the rise of streaming services, there's been a concerted effort to make love stories something people will want to enjoy again. It's almost as if they want to make people fall in love with love again. They don't want to lose the progress and better understanding of the complications of love which have come out in the mean time.
He's All That manages to do that quite well. Using the format of She's All That, this story shows how love has changed It allows for the complications which love brings in today's age but still gives you the hope for a romantic ending people often crave.
Do yourself a favour and find a way to fall in love again by checking out He's All That.
Watch the movie on Netflix.
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