Love Actually?

I watched (500) Days Of Summer again today (and now pushing Moon off the top of my list of favourite films of the year).  There is a scene in the film where Tom (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) talks about how people can't really say how they feel anymore because of all the lies told by music, movies and greetings cards.

Take Valentines Day for instance.  You can be a great boyfriend, say I love you all the time, be romantic all year round but miss one particular day when you have to buy a tacky card and suddenly you are a terrible person.  Why?  Because a bunch of greetings card companies have told us we must act in a certain way.

It's the same with movies.  In Sleepless In Seattle, Rosie O'Donnell tells Meg Ryan “You don't want love, you want love in a movie”.

Everyone has seen so many love stories and romantic comedies these days, so much so that have movies distorted our view of love?

Women (especially Bridget Jones) want their own Mr Darcy and what man would say no if Julia Roberts told them “she was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her”?

Yet as much as we would love real life to be like the movies, how practical is it?  Would a woman really be impressed if you stood outside her window playing her favourite song on a boombox while in your dressing gown?  Noise pollution.  Rushing to the airport to stop the love of your life getting on the plane?  Expensive (you would have to buy a last minute ticket to get to the gate) and impractical (security checks take forever after 9/11), plus I don't think the airline would refund your tickets if they do stay!

So while I wait to discover if my view of love is a real one or a fictional one, I'll just be repeatedly watching and reading High Fidelity waiting until I had a girl at "hello".