The break-up Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The break-up - Essay Example This relationship leads to development of hilarious events in the couple’s life which generates good amount of laughter from the audience. Hence, even though the movie The Break-Up discards some regular genre conventions of a romantic/screwball comedy through its romantic setting, eccentric characters and humorous situations, it still fulfills the genre requirements of romantic/screwball comedy. Genre requirement Screwball comedy movies are the movies that are based on the hilarious situations that arise from the interactions or the encounters between the people who are ‘opposite’ to each other in various ways. For a film to be categorized in the genre of screwball comedy, it requires to have the clash of the ‘opposites’, humorous situations, eccentric characters, and a storyline involving romantic and comedy themes. The movie The Break-Up has all these aspects. Clash of the ‘opposites’ The movie The Break-Up tells the story of two charac ters, Gary and Brooke, whose romantic relationship starts to fall apart due to the unfulfilled expectations from each other. The two lead characters in the movie, Gary and Brooke, are completely opposite to each other. Their personalities, their choices, their lifestyle, etc. differ drammatically. For example, Brooke is a perfectionist and conscious about cleanliness. On the other hand, Gary is least bothered about cleanliness and has the habit of leaving his clothes, accessories and video game stuff all around the house. While Brooke is perfect in her dressing, weight and appearance, Gary is careless about his appearance and is overweight and dresses casually. The ‘opposite’ patterns are visible in their behavior also. Brooke is physically active and ambitious person while Gary is extremely lazy and has a laid back attitude. Brooke cares about emotional support while Gary is zero in emotional quotient. He spends most of his time playing his video game and is irresponsi ble about his duties in house and in the relationship. These differences in their personalities give a comic feel to the movie. There are many funny situations in the movie which arise due to incompatibility between Brooke and Gary. For example, when Brooke asks Gary to help her in arranging the table and complaints about bringing just three lemons when she had asked for twelve, he alludes to her art profession and says that Michelangelo ended up doing a masterpiece as he worked alone and did not ask anyone else to help. Also, he says that when he was making the sixteenth chapel, he did not ask other guys to help him saying that he did the first fifteen chapels and now he needs their help. Gary tries to suggest to Brooke that she is a super achiever and she does things perfect when she does it alone. On this comment, Brooke reminds him that it was not the ‘sixteenth’ chapel, but ‘Sistine’ chapel that Michelangelo painted. This generates a great laughter. Th e incident where Brooke asks him to bring twelve lemons to decorate a vase and he brings only three also generates laughter. Criticizing Gary for bringing just three lemons, she says that Michelangelo was able to do a perfect job because when he asked for twelve brushes, he was given twelve brushes and not three. This conversation shows that Gary has absolutely no knowledge about art and painting world, which is passion of Brooke’s life. This shows the conflict in their likings. Also, Gary feels that