Isn’t it Romantic opens up with a shot of the main character, Natalie (Rebel Wilson), watching the movie Pretty Woman, and dreaming of getting married to a handsome man. However, her mom comes in and shoots down her dream saying, “Life’s not a fairy tale, girls like us don’t get that”. This comment sticks with her far into the future, as we can see when Natalie tells her best friend how fake rom-coms are by listing off all the cliches. This leads the audience to believe that maybe Natalie doesn’t even believe in love at all. That night as she was heading home from work, a man mugs her and as she is running away she hits her head on a pole, sending her into a coma.
When she wakes up, she is in a classic rom-com world that is full of the cliches she listed off at the beginning of the movie. For example, everything is beautiful. New York City is covered in flowers and there is a cupcake shop on every corner. Suddenly, every man looks at her and finds her beautiful, something she refused to believe to be true in the “real” world. She also ends up having a gay-best-friend named Danny who, in real life, is just her drug dealing next door neighbor.
Throughout her stay in the rom-com world, Natalie’s interactions with all of the cheesy staples turn out to be hilarious for the audience. As a parody to a typical rom-com, Natalie hates being in this world where she can’t even swear to express her true emotions. As she explores the world, she only seems to run into more and more cliches that continue to drive her crazy, but there is still a driving storyline of how she will get out of this world.
To escape this world, she first thinks she needs to fall in love with the rich handsome man. Then believes she needs to fall in love with her guy-best-friend. In the end though, to get out of this roma-com world, she realizes she needs to love herself. This is the underlying message the movie sends that makes this rom-com distinct from others, and satirical.
Even though the movie is clearly satirical, the ending pushes against that. In the end she does get the guy she’s always wanted, and she gets the job she’s always wanted. Natalie clarifies that this is all because of her confidence, resulting from her new-found self love, but doesn’t that still make this movie a rom-com? If a rom-com cliche is having the girl and the guy end up together, and the movie ending assuming they’re going to live “happily ever after”, then this movie isn’t truly a parody because, in the end, it turns out to be like any other rom-com, even if there is an important message.
Whether you believe Isn’t it Romantic to be satire or not, I can attest that this movie really does make you think, even when you’re too busy laughing.
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