A. O. Scott contemplates the decline of the Hollywood romantic comedy and wonders how it is that so rich and noble a genre, a form used by Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks and Ernst Lubitsch to fully explore the complexities and frustrations of love's pursuit and all its attending derangements, could have degenerated into a way to grind out fodder to fill theaters in the late-winter season and keep Kate Hudson employed. Compared to those earlier great works, "the dry martinis of the past have been sweetened and diluted. We emerge lulled and soothed, but rarely intoxicated." Sure, some of this is the nostalgia talking, but it's not as if the man doesn't have a big ol' point. For some "stars", such as Hudson (and Matthew McConaughey, her co-star in the new Fool's Gold), steady work in such movies as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Alex and Emma, Raising Helen and Failure to Launch — paper-thin flicks just passing through theaters on their way to steady rotation on cable — is the movie equivalent to being a cast regular on one of those TV series, such as Wings or Coach, that seem to stay on the air for fifteen years even though you've never met anyone who watches it. What's depressing is how the ambition seems to have leaked out of the genre, and not just ambitious filmmaking, but any ambitions regarding serious romance.
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