WARNING: The following contains spoilers for multiple film endings, including Wild Mountain Thyme, now streaming on VOD.
If you spent 2020 curled into a ball of despair then chances are, you were in desperate need of some escapist, slushy entertainment. And where better to get your fix than the world of romance movies -- movies that put the 'corn' into popcorn-like virtually no other genre? Romance -- and we mean that with a hard capital R -- is something many of us enjoy sinking into to relax, like a hot bath after a long day of pre-lockdown Being Outside (remember that?), but nothing can dull that experience quicker than an unexpected and completely unjustified surprise.
Plot twists are hardly unwelcome in the genre; in fact, it more or less lives and dies by them. But films like the Holiday release of Wild Mountain Thyme, highlight exactly what kinds of plot twists romance movies don't need. If you care about the ending of Wild Moutain Thyme, which you absolutely shouldn't, then maybe skip over this part but honestly, you'll want to keep reading. In the Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan starring film, Dornan's adorkable Irish farmer, Anthony Reilly, remains frustratingly ignorant of Blunt's Rosemary Muldoon's affections for him for most of the movie. What's a classic love story without its hurdles, after all? However, this hurdle isn't exactly one Shakespeare could have concocted... or wanted to. As it turns out, Anthony's cold feet come down to him believing he isn't entirely human. He's actually a honey bee. And no, this isn't a live-action, gender-bent remake of The Bee Movie (thank goodness)
There are whiffs of this peculiar characterization earlier in the film -- and Rosemary even calls herself a swan, though not in the literal way Anthony means. But none of this prepares you for the true WTF-ness of Wild Mountain Thyme's big reveal. It also adds nothing of particular substance to the film, nor is it explained why he believes he's a bee. All it does is make for some punny headlines in the media.
No matter the genre, these out-of-left-field twists can completely tank a narrative's credibility if the audience can't trace them back -- Whodunnit-style -- through everything that came before. For by-the-book romances, they can completely break the cozy spell that most viewers want cast over them. Wild Mountain Thyme isn't the first offender, either. The 2013 Nicolas Spark movie, Safe Haven, is a pretty solid tale of recovery and romance, as its title implies, which transports a woman fleeing an abusive partner into a quiet, beach-side life of seclusion... aside from the very handsome and very available single father right on her doorstep. Calling this 'cozy' might sound like a stretch to non-romance lovers but survival plots such as this are practically a subgenre of their own; the comfortability of a fresh start offsetting the hell that their female survivors go through to reach it.
Sadly, the otherwise appropriately predictable story is torpedoed by the revelation at the end: its female lead's BFF was the ghost of her new beau's wife the entire time. Though breadcrumbs for this are pretty easy to pick up on, the most unbelievable part is not the paranormal element but the bizarre keenness with which Casper the Friendly Ex-Wife has in finding her living lover a new squeeze. She's even written a letter addressed to his future Mrs. Right assuring her that she's totally cool with him moving on and that is confident he's found the best possible step-mom for their kids.
Wanting your partner and children to be happy after your death is entirely reasonable. But this level of creepy magnanimousness brings the film to ludicrous heights and adds almost nothing to the story that viewers couldn't have surmised from a quick flashback or expositionary detail instead. In fact, it only adds unnecessary complications and awkward lingering questions (never to be answered), spoiling what could have been a well-told, straightforward love story.
If that's not stupid enough for you, then how about last year's A New York Christmas Wedding? Christmas romance movies have a particular weight of expectation on them to provide both the warmth of a classic, paperback romance and the saccharine joy of Holiday magic. If a typical romance movie is like a hot bath, a Christmas romance is like a bath in hot chocolate. In A New York Christmas Wedding, the standard 'this person is really an angel' trope comes into play, mixed with the alternate timeline hijinks of A Christmas Carol. At first, this provides the female lead with a chance to experience a world in which her love interest is still alive. Then comes a twist: they were pregnant and lost the baby before they died. Then comes the other twist: the angel is their unborn child.
Eventually, the requisite happy ending leaves nobody dead... except for the baby angel, who is wiped from existence by facilitating said happy ending. Not much else needs to be added here about how bizarre and possibly controversial this all is and, again, it just comes across as a twist for the sake of it in a rare, queer festive romance.
Of course, no discussion of clunky reveals could be complete without the Robert Pattinson-fronted, Remember Me, a 2010 romantic drama that turns out to be a 9-11 story in hiding -- a revelation that Rotten Tomatoes rightly describes as "borderline offensive." If there's ever a word you don't want to be associated with a romance film, it's that.
The list could honestly go on and on but the point is a lot of these 'gotcha!' moments add needlessly and oftentimes, problematic wrinkles for an audience that simply doesn't want them. More hard-hitting fare can throw in all the twists and turns they want for viewers looking to be shocked, appalled and left on the edges of their seats. Most romance fans, however, want to be as far back from that edge as possible -- preferably, bundled up in the corner of it while a delightfully formulaic love story plays out in front of them. When the real world sucks, the Hallmark brand of mush is the perfect tonic. Just keep the honey bees and dead angel babies out of it, please.
Directed by John Patrick Shanley, Wild Mountain Thyme stars Jamie Dornan, Emily Blunt, Christopher Walken and Jon Hamm. It is available to watch on-demand.
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