Miko: there's usually a great deal of irony involved. Anyone who remembers the original scene in Love Story with Francis Lai's score [Warning: MIDI] in the background will generally make some homage to that scene at some point in their lives. It's the romanticists' prelude to shouting Samuel L. Jackson's line from Snakes on a Plane.

I did know a guy who raced to his ex-girlfriend's in the middle of the night, threw rocks at her window and proposed. (She said yes. Which sucked for me because I had a major crush on him.)

Do you know of anyone who's ever come to a sudden decision, When-Harry-Met-Sally-style, that they have to be with a certain someone and it has to start right now -- and thus embarked upon a mad sprint across town, or midnight drive across the state, to make it happen?

Nope, don't think.

Most behavior in romantic movies would get you arrested if you did them in real life.

Well, there was that crazy astronaut woman with the diapers....

SmartDalek: Thanks for giving me some context. I've never actually managed to sit through Love Story, so I wouldn't have known that.

matildaben: OK, good example. Make that "have you known any non-crazy people" etc.

The crazy astronaut was going to confront the other woman, though, not her lover. That's a whole 'nother category of movie.

No, but I wish it would happen to me. You know, a knight in shining armor suddenly panics when I'm on the verge of marrying Mr. Not-Quite-Right, runs into the church and starts pounding on the glass and screaming my name.

Actually, no. Because that would be crazy.

And also because that man would have slept with my mother, and I don't want to be with any man who has slept with my mother. Not that my mom isn't great, just that I don't like the share in quite that way.

The whole point of the chick flick, or the frantic romantic ending, is escapism. It's the dream of the thing that never quite works out exactly that way. If these things happened every day, they wouldn't be so compelling. We'd be like, "Has anyone ever known anyone who really got to know someone, became not only lovers but best friends, and then eventually made a calm, rational decision to get married?" And then we'd be making movies about that.

Great point, brina. What's a shame is that the Dan movie was almost capable of reaching a real depiction of a real, complicated, human love life, but ended up using the chick-flick tropes at the last minute - which made it disappointing. The entire movie teetered uncomfortably between honest and escapist, only to go escapist at the end.

The movie was OK in it's formulaic way, but I HATED HATED HATED the tag ending with the wedding. I dropped the whole movie about two notches for me.

Upon thinking about it, I kind of do know a story sort of like this, involving my friends JB and TS.

TS (girl) and JB (boy) had been dating off and on all through college and for 4 or 5 years after, the entire time I'd known them. T was undeniably, undisputedly the love of J's life. She was a sexy, beautiful writer, and J was an awkward (but funny) computer geek. Inasmuch as you can say it, she was a bit out of his league, and everyone acknowledged it. Something in him won her over, though (most likely it was his insane devotion), and they had a torrid, tumultuous relationship filled with many ups and downs.

The downs usually went like this: They'd broken up, J was inconsolable but finally started dating again, and T (who had been dating all along) got jealous, dumped her current beau (or sometimes not), and started sleeping with J again. Sometimes this led to back-togetherness, and sometimes it just led to sneaky sex (which was fine with J, because it meant that he had her, in some sense, and that was all he wanted).

This cycle repeats itself many times. As they get older, T realizes that it's either going nowhere, or it's going to drive her crazy, so she moves to France. They'd decided that she'd live in France for 6 months while they spent time apart -- enforced by the distance -- and they'd re-evaluate, most likely marrying when she returned.

But.

While in France and unofficially engaged, T fell in love with some French guy whose name I can't recall. So, we'll call him French Guy.

J was, of course, heartbroken, but he decided to let her have the space and come to her own decision. It was the right thing to do, because his feigned, calculated indifference always got the better of her. She broke it off with French Guy and moved back to Austin to be with J. Moved in with him and everything.

After a month or so, though, it became clear that French Guy was not to be dissuaded. He flew to Austin, unannounced, and told T that he couldn't live without her. Now, T loved big romantic gestures, and attention, so she fell for it. And thus began an awkward period where J and T were living together, and lovestruck French Guy -- who knew no one else in town and didn't have anyplace else to stay -- was staying with them.

This French Guy period coincided with J's birthday. It was the tradition for our group of friends to take the birthday person out to dinner. There were six or so of us, plus French Guy (who had been invited by T, against J's will). What followed was an extraordinarily awkward birthday dinner during which French Guy proposed to T and the tablecloth caught fire.

So, I guess the point is that French Guy flew unannounced to Austin to propose to T, knowing that she was sort of engaged and living with J. If you were a friend of French Guy, the story would probably sound really romantic. Upon reflection, as a friend of J and T, it really just sounds kind of creepy.

Oh, and J and T got married about 5 years ago and have 2 kids now.

WOW, pup.

See, now, why don't they make movies like that?

And danf, I agree: we decided that the wedding scene in itself took the movie from acceptable to Lifetime TV quality.

OK, mudpuppie's story reminded me of something that happened to my French teacher in high school. Our class was full of 17 and 18 year old women, and the professor wasn't much older, so we mostly just gossiped (en francais!) about her love life.

She was dating/living with the uncle of one of my acquaintances, who was 10-15 years older than her but very charming. However, Madam hated his parrot, or something, and didn't think he was marriage material.

Near the end of the school year, her high school sweetheart flew cross-country on the spur of the moment to propose to her. IIRC, she turned him down, but she did end up moving back to her home state and they started dating again.

Now muddgirl's story reminds me of my old Russian teacher - she was living in Moscow during Soviet times and had been seeing a man in a fairly desultory fashion. He'd fallen head over heels with her, though, and in a desperate attempt to woo her he went to her flat at night in the middle of winter to propose. She turned him down and he sat outside all night in the freezing cold, staring up at her window.

Eventually a neighbour asked him what he was doing and he explained the story, at which point neighbour stormed up to my Russian teacher's flat and told her that this man was prepared to die if she didn't marry him, look! down there! there he is! so she accepted.

The whole point of the chick flick, or the frantic romantic ending, is escapism

Indeed- that's how I like my entertainment. People always complain about how "unrealistic" shows like "Sex and the City" are- like OMG how can their afford their fancy apartments and designer clothes if they never work? Helloooooo, I know what real life looks like, I HAVE one- I want to be entertained and swept away by glamour and romance :-D

Yeah, I'm with you TPS. Once, someone I was dating decorated my house while I was out of town. I came home from the airport and there were christmas lights in my living room and -- honest to god -- rose petals all over the floor. And all I could think was, "Fuck, it's late, I just got home from a long trip, and now I have to clean this shit up."

Maybe I'm just not the romantic sort, but it annoyed the hell out of me.

Okay, I'd actually nearly forgotten, but this happened to me..

My best friend got married right out of high school. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to get out of her parents house. She married a guy in the Army, and they were stationed in Ogden, Utah. I flew out the summer after their wedding for a visit. On my last day before flying home, we were driving along, and a guy started flirting with me. We stopped at a supermarket, he and I started talking, and exchanged phone numbers/addresses.
I flew home, and a week later he called me. He was at Newark airport in New Jersey, about an hour from my house!!!! I had no idea what to do. I picked him up, found a motel near my house, and he hung out with me for a week. Then he flew home. Nice? Yeah, but I was more creeped out by it. He wrote me for a while, but I let it drop. I still have the picture of him that I snapped while riding in my friend's car.