Toy Story 4 and the Rom Com, Part I

Toy Story 4 made me cry tonight, but most emotional films do, sometimes even after the fifth viewing. What struck us, though, was how well it aligned with romantic comedies we’ve been watching for work—especially the teen films following a Superbad move from homosocial to heteronormative relationships. In Toy Story 4, though, Woody’s (Tom Hanks) move away from Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) isn’t the problem. It’s Woody’s move away from Andy’s replacement child, Bonnie. If I were to make a psychological reading of the film, I might have more to say. But as a romantic comedy, it just hit all the right tropes and themes with the twists Pixar includes that garner laughs. Here are some of the rom com conventions either included or varied in Toy Story 4: 

• Frequently hinge on role-playing and deception​
• Twentieth and Twenty-First C romantic comedies promote a therapeutic ethos—they believe that people can grow and repair their character defects when the pain, humiliation, and thrill of love makes them reexamine traits they hold on to. ​
• Lesson focused on consumerism—win love by going shopping (consumption and courtship)​

·      Distinctive aesthetics come from dialogue, not images: combative, insults as part of mating ritual, deflates serious subjects​

·      Slapstick action like pratfalls​

·      Set in New York City--Manhattan (or more recently, other cities like London): center of screenwriters, money, fashion, and culture—sophisticates, not hicks​

·      True feelings found in the "green world" to which they travel—a pastoral setting as in Midsummer Night's Dream ​

·      Dogs play a pivotal role in many romantic comedies: Must Love Dogs, As Good as it Gets​

·      Music provides the food of love with popular songs associated with the films ​

·      Signal appearance of a new society with a festive ritual—weddings​

·      Communal—ask audiences to join in the imaginary wholeness and satisfaction of misunderstandings resolved​