Evaluating Rom-Coms on Breakup Brain

In the immediate aftermath of my breakup, I self-medicated with a heavy dose of action movies. And it was…exhausting. I was already living in a baseline state of stress. What was I thinking inviting more into my life? I sat through far too many anxiety-inducing cinematic close calls between life and death. And in the case of Ballerina, not much life, mostly death. Talk about a body count, not the fun kind! So I pivoted and found what I really needed somewhere else. 

I was back at the theater for the 300th time that month in the middle of the afternoon (unemployment, aside from the no money thing, is lit), playing a dicey game of musical chairs. My originally reserved plush recliner was broken and what was I going to do, sit at 90 degrees for two hours? No. I finally, luckily, landed in an unclaimed seat in an otherwise full theater, propped up my tired dancing feet, and about twenty seconds into The Materialists breathed out a sigh of relief. 

This movie was playing directly to my expertise. Because right now I’m not clouded by love, I’ve been clobbered by it. What is the saying? The oppressed are the experts on the oppressor? That makes me the authority here. What follows is a highly academic document in my study on a brief list of rom coms and how they portray love.

***Spoilers ahead. Click away now or it’s on you.***

The Materialists (2025) 

Written and Directed by Celine Song 

In this film, Dakota Johnson, a New York City matchmaker, bravely navigates a love triangle between two hunks, fresh meat Pedro Pascal and ex-boyfriend Chris Evans. I will not be using character names here, because they’re irrelevant. This movie, whoever you ask, is about Dakota, Pedro, and Chris. 

There is some biting, comical, and relatable commentary on dating today sprinkled throughout the movie. Men don’t make it out unscathed in writer/director Celine Song’s script, but the main factors here are women’s fixation on money and height. Why do we do that? Why are Americans so hung up on six feet? That measurement doesn’t even exist in other countries. Let’s evolve. For us shorties, sub six feet is cozier for cuddling anyway. Although, this storyline did give us an excellent Pedro delivery of the line, “It’s hard to think it’s not about the legs right now,” which sent me. So it can stay, I guess.

But as a whole, the movie failed to make a point about love, which was a let down. 

On one hand, you’ve got the charismatic and achingly rich Pedro, and on the other hand you have the charismatic and painfully broke Chris. This is a romantic comedy movie, so naturally, she goes for the poor boy. 

But if this were real life! Dakota, my love! What? The internet has spoken and there are plenty of places to read about this being “broke boy propaganda.” It’s 2025, women do consult their brains in choosing love these days. However, Celine, I understand you were working within the romance genre and trying to stay true to its heart, which does require a certain shunting of pragmatism. But that doesn’t mean I agree with what she’s getting at. 

My problem is not that he’s broke, whatever, nobody’s perfect. My problem is that money was the issue that broke them up before and they’re getting back together although this specific problem hasn’t been resolved in any way. If they weren’t able to make a low-expense lifestyle work before, it wasn’t going to work now. They’re doomed! This ending was not a happy one if you ask me! 

There was a phone call about a potential Dakota promotion right at the end that I think was supposed to provide hope of a solution to money woes, but it really didn’t work. This wasn’t a case of love winning, this was a case of ignoring the lessons of your past. So, maybe as an expert viewer of this romantic comedy, I’m not willing to do my part and overlook pragmatism. Or maybe I’m just an aquarius. 

How would I have wanted it to end? She dumps both of them. Love is important (bye Pedro), but it doesn’t conquer all (bye Chris). Regardless, go see it on the big screen while you still can. They’re all very beautiful and pleasant to watch.

How I felt about life after viewing: Slightly better because love clearly makes you stupid. So now, given the circumstances, maybe I’m a little less dumb. 

Anyone But You (2023)

Written by Ilana Wolpert and Will Gluck, Directed by Will Gluck 

The press tour was written and executed on a much higher level than the movie. Someone get that publicist into the WGA, they deserve union benefits. 

I did laugh at Australian Beefcake’s motorized butterfly stroke through the bay. It was the best bit of physical comedy this movie attempted. 

That’s all I have to say about this one. 

How I felt about life after viewing: I was actually dumber after watching this movie. So it canceled out the benefits of The Materialists and I was back at baseline.

Swingers (1996) 

Written by Jon Favreau, Directed by Doug Liman

This one isn’t really a rom-com, it’s more of a buddy comedy with a breakup subplot. But that’s enough to qualify for this list. Mike (Jon Favreau) is a comedian relatively new to LA, and hopelessly hung up on his ex-girlfriend back in Chicago. His friends, most notably Trent (Vince Vaughn), take him on a series of escapades to try to cheer him up. Repeatedly they tell him, “You’re so money and you don’t even know it.” But not much they do makes him, or me, believe it.  

Friend and romance storylines aside, I love the version of LA it lives in. The friends spend a lot of time in the areas where I often poke around. Vince Vaughn’s character is a disaster though, which was the point, but I found it a bit unpalatable at times. I’m not sure his character would make it into a post-2010 version of this movie without a large transformation. 

As for the love of it all, I thought what it did was sweet and real. Everything changes for Mopey Mike one night when a beautiful woman (Heather Graham) catches his eye out at a bar. They get to talking, and find they have quite a lot in common as far as where they are in life and how life is treating them (not well). They see themselves in each other, and the key thing is, they like what they see, warts and all. Although the warts actually aren’t warts, they’re means for connection to the right person.  

Mike is working with the same raw materials at the end of the movie when he is at peace as at the beginning of the movie when he is a wreck. He didn’t get a big break in his career, replace his junker car, or turn into the womanizer his friends were encouraging him to be. He saw a woman that was just like him, and so money. If she was, then he must be too. For the first time since his breakup, he was the one dishing out the pep talk. He spoke to her honestly, wisely. And then he saw, and I saw, that he is money! He had just been locked out of his account. 

How I felt about life after viewing: Slightly relieved. For the majority of the movie, my personal morale about life was low. Mike’s breakup made him feel like a loser, which made him act like a loser. And if you act like a loser, well, you are what you eat. Cue the crisis…am I being a loser?? Does that mean I AM a loser?? But at the end of the movie, when Mike sits radiantly in a diner across from his disaster friend Trent, he has clearly surpassed him in every measure. Maybe, just maybe, his breakup made him more money than ever. Maybe mine will too. 

The Apartment (1960)

Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, Directed by Billy Wilder

In this movie, low-level insurance clerk C.C. Baxter (John Lemmon) lets the executives at work use his apartment for their extramarital affairs. All is going according to plan, with a promotion imminent, when big bossman Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) uses Baxter’s apartment for the affair he’s having with office elevator operator, and Baxter’s love from afar, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).

The first 20 minutes of the movie really bamboozled me into thinking this was a straight comedy. Hats off to Shirley Mclaine for threatening to shut an elevator door on a man’s sensitive bits with a comedic delivery that I rewound to watch twice. And then the movie became kind of tragic. Which I guess, is a bit like love. 

When Fran learns that Sheldrake will not be leaving his wife for her as he promised, and that she is just the latest in a long line of women he’s wooed from the office, she takes drastic measures and swallows all of the sleeping pills she finds in Baxter’s bathroom. Baxter finds her limp and lifeless, calls a doctor, and sees her through her recovery. He naturally falls more in love with her along the way. However, Sheldrake’s wife finds out about her husband’s extracurriculars, kicks him out, and he comes back for Fran. And she takes him back (girl!).   

Despite nursing her back to health, the most loving thing Baxter does for Fran is let her go. He respects her wishes and leaves her to it. It’s also the most loving thing he did for himself. Because it kick started a process he should have started a long time ago. There was a lot he needed to let go of (his job, his apartment) that he relied on like a bad habit. But, letting go of love made letting go of the rest easy. Barely blinking, he quits his job and packs up his apartment.  

After a logic jump that didn’t quite make sense but I’m choosing to ignore, Fran runs away from Sheldrake out onto the street on New Years Eve (classic), wind through her pixie cut, back to the apartment with the man who loves her. We know she doesn’t love Baxter, but she’s now freed from her own bad habit and willing to move towards the type of love she really wants. Maybe she will come to love him, she’s certainly open to it now. But while playing cards, Baxter tells Fran he loves her, and she responds, “Shut up and deal.” And then the movie ends. Iconic. Each in their own time.

How I felt about life after viewing: Very grateful to not be a woman in the workplace in 1960. Otherwise, a little improved! Letting go of someone you love is brave, and it makes being brave about everything else a lot easier. After my last breakup, I lasted about a month before I quit a job that wasn’t taking me where I wanted to go. I had no other plan, but that really wasn’t important to my breakup brain. (This time, my job quit me, but I might not have lasted long anyway!) It could be that what we recognize as apathy in the earliest stages of a breakup is something else…maybe it’s courage. Breakups are a time where we take meaningful action that we wouldn’t do in any other scenario. So, we should harness that and make the most of it. Is a breakup a…sacred time? I went to yoga yesterday and have spiritual words on the brain, I’m getting carried away. 

  

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Written by Jason Segel, Directed by Nicholas Stoller 

This is the one movie on the list I had seen before. I watched it because a) it’s a great breakup movie and b) I’m going to Oahu tomorrow! Not for the express purpose of healing, but hopefully as a side effect. I anticipate far fewer unwanted run-ins. 

I’m not sure if this one even needs a plot breakdown, haven’t we all seen it? Well, for my grandpa’s sake: TV composer Peter (Jason Segel) takes a healing trip to Hawaii after his TV actress girlfriend Sarah (Kristen Bell) dumps him for someone else. About twenty peaceful seconds after arriving in Hawaii, Peter runs into Sarah, who is on vacation and staying at the same hotel with her new man, famous musician Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Peter and Sarah spend the next few days trying to stalk each other, avoid each other, get over each other, and even get back together. They fail at everything. Peter has one beacon of hope in a budding romance with front desk minx Rachel (Mila Kunis), which he also fumbles. After Peter hurts Rachel via a limp hookup effort with his ex, Rachel tells him that he has no business being with anyone right now. She’s right. 

So Peter books it back to LA, rots in bed, pounds angrily into his keyboard, and then slowly begins to heal. He cooks pasta! He runs on the treadmill! He writes and produces the Dracula puppet rock opera he’s always dreamed of! On opening night, his puppet show is a masterpiece, and Rachel is there in the audience. This time, he’s ready. They just might have a chance.

If I highlighted some of my favorite lines, I would end up pasting the whole script here. Incredibly quotable. Ask my sister Emily what her favorite is. 

What this movie gets right about love is the messy, tragic, overly dramatic process of getting over someone, particularly in the early stages. Jason Segel clearly knows about a breakup. Tearing up at the cereal tupperware his ex bought him for his Froot Loops? Mhmm. Internal relationship highlight reel making him cry in very inopportune scenarios? Yep. Wailing, curled up in a ball on the floor of the $6,000/night Hawaiian suite he got for free? Somehow, also relatable. 

What it also gets right is not using a new love interest as a healing device. It used her as a barometer for how far he has to go, and how far he’s come. It’s on him to get there. Real!

How I felt about life after viewing: Better! We need more movies about Funny Sad Boys. It’s a cathartic genre that effectively, gently, encourages us to laugh at ourselves. 

Love is so obviously happy and sad and full of pleasure and pain. It’s easy to forget that it’s also funny. It was good to have the reminder. So watch some movies, be with your friends, take some risks, and cry into a cocktail by the beach if you need to. It’s going to be ok.