Ryan is all of these woman in one, the rare on-screen leading lady who refuses to be defined by just one part (or one relationship) in her life. The film is as much a story about a daughter, a friend, and a business owner as it is a woman who falls for an unexpected man over the connective magic of early AOL. In “You’ve Got Mail,” the inevitable Ryan/Hanks romance might conclude the story, but within the rest of Ephron’s 1998 delight, Ryan also finds fresh facets for her Kathleen Kelly.
She even plays three different women in “Joe Versus the Volcano,” each its own iteration of a dream girl with her own worldview.
But while Hanks’ performances in their trio of ’90s-era rom-coms often feel familiar - save for his “You’ve Got Mail” turn, in which he struggles to come across as a temporary cad - each Ryan performance is distinct from the rest. Roberts had Gere, and Ryan had Tom Hanks. Like Roberts, some of Ryan’s best work happened when she was teamed with a familiar leading man. We love her tough characters because they’re unique to her appeal. These are not healthy, happy stories, but Roberts’ inherent likeability binds them together. And in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Roberts’ Julianne has convinced herself she’s in love with her long-time best friend (Dermot Mulroney), to the point that she is ready to break up his wedding to his wonderfully ditzy partner (Cameron Diaz, a rom-com queen in her own right).
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In “Notting Hill,” she’s a similarly adrift movie star (what a wild idea for a rom-com!). In “Runaway Bride,” the headline-worthy gag about a small-town woman (Roberts) who has a panache for running away from the altar obscures a profound inner struggle as she turns to her paramours to hide her identity crisis.
“Pretty Woman” was first imagined as a dark drama, which is obvious in the quieter moments of Roberts’ performance, but painful edges are peeking out of her other ’90s hits as well. Roberts is associated with her trademark giant smile and open-mouthed laugh - best exemplified by a charming scene in “Pretty Woman” that was actually the result of Gere playing a good-natured trick on her - but that buoyancy obscures deep reserves of human drama. Hogan’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and Roger Michell’s “Notting Hill,” both prickly rom-coms that saw Roberts playing complex heroines. Her work bookended the ’90s, as she also ended the decade with “Runaway Bride” in the late summer of 1999 (which, adorably enough, re-teamed her with both Marshall and her “Pretty Woman” co-star Richard Gere). And none of it was possible without its leading ladies.Īmong them, Roberts reigned supreme. Though the genre has fallen out of studio favor in recent years, becoming more popular in the streaming world (Netflix, in particular, has enjoyed great success with the formula, though the streamer tends to focus on stories that skew younger), in the ’90s, it enjoyed a major resurgence. not awards material - in the earlier days of Hollywood, that wasn’t the case at all (see: “It Happened One Night,” one of only three films to ever win the big five Oscars). Romantic comedies have always been a staple of Hollywood movie-making (and storytelling itself), and the industry has long cycled through different iterations, subgenres, and tropes that fall within the general idea of “these two people are going to fall in love, and it will be funny.” While rom-coms are typically viewed as lighter fare - i.e. Who couldn’t help falling in love with them - and the genre itself? In the ’90s, rom-coms enjoyed a boom time, but even the best of the bunch didn’t stand a chance of working without some of the best actresses to ever tackle material this romantic and this funny. It not only established Roberts as a star, but the very concept that - even in a story that hinges on two people mixing, mingling, and falling in love - one of them could shine bright enough to carry the whole damn affair.Ĭhloë Sevigny on 'Kids,' 'The Last Days of Disco,' and Nuking the '90s Status Quoĭogme 95 Was the Last Great Filmmaking MovementĪ History of Unsimulated Sex Scenes in Cannes Films, from 'Mektoub' to 'Antichrist'Ģ022 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? More than thirty years later, the film remains a high point of both ’90s-era studio filmmaking in general (it’s difficult to picture Disney taking a Sundance Labs script and turning it into a broadly-appealing story about “a hooker with a heart of gold” ever again) and the romantic comedy in particular.
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