The horrible rom-com that reduces Quentin Tarantino to tears: “A guilty pleasure”
Quentin Tarantino has dabbled in many genres and paid tribute to a wide array of filmmakers and filmmaking styles, but one area he hasn’t explored is romantic comedy. That isn’t to say that his films aren’t comedic. He has a knack for writing dialogue, and many of the monologues his characters spout have become iconic comedic set-pieces. Watching hitmen philosophise about the Bible before shooting someone in the head is inherently funny, even if it’s about as macabre as it gets.
Romance is slightly less common in his movies, perhaps because his work shies away from sincerity at pretty much every turn. The violence is operatic and intentionally unrealistic. The characters are more well-spoken and verbose than anyone in the real world. And personal relationships are marked by smart-assery and bickering rather than destiny-ordained true love. Even the Hollywood-style romance of Django and Broomhilda in Django Unchained is relegated to obligatory window dressing to set the plot in motion.
Despite all these bits of evidence to the contrary, however, Tarantino is an old softy, at least according to the man himself. How else could you explain his weakness for one of the most hackneyed rom-coms of the past quarter century? Cast your mind back to 2009 when Matthew McConaughey had yet to make his introduction to Hollywood as an actor and was floundering in that delightful caricature phase of the early 2000s. He’d made a string of rom-coms of wildly uneven quality and had just starred in what was probably the worst of the bunch.
The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past stars the future Oscar winner as a terrible person who treats women like Elon Musk treats Twitter employees. After breaking up with several of them on a conference call, he is visited by the ghost of his late uncle (Michael Douglas wearing sunglasses for some reason), who informs him that he is about to live out the plot of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The only difference is that the ghosts from his past, present, and future will be women whom he has wronged. In the process of these visitations, he learns to accept how badly he fucked up, especially in relation to his first love, Jennifer Garner.
This is not a good movie. It trots out just about every single cliché of the genre with zero pep. And yet, for Tarantino, it is a tearjerker, pure and simple. “Rom-coms are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine,” the director said, explaining that, especially when he’s on planes, he finds himself weeping openly over them.
The scene in The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past that reduces him to tears is a flashback in which the child version of Garner’s character gives the child version of McConaughey’s character his first camera. He goes on to become a famous fashion photographer who takes advantage of all the models in his vicinity, so one could argue that this is actually the low point of the movie, the dark genesis from which all the hellishness springs. However, as far as Tarantino is concerned, it’s the emotional gateway that goes straight to his heart. To each their own.
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