The Dude’s High 5s: Movie Couples

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. That is if you consider midnight a corner. So today’s High 5 will deal with movie couples. The problem is, most movies that I watch and enjoy have very little to do with the courting process. So from my “Dude-Bro” point of view, these are the movie couples that I root for.

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5. Claudia and Jim (Magnolia

Magnolia is a weird movie. Its interconnected storytelling left a lot of people feeling like it was disjointed. I was not part of that group. I enjoyed the episodic nature of the film. One of the segments dealt with Claudia and Jim.  Jim is a cop and Claudia is a drug addict. However, Jim is a terrible cop. He approaches a relationship as a way to make amends for how bad of a police officer he is. Claudia isn’t quite ready to be clean and feels like she doesn’t deserve happiness. For however long, or brief, they were together, I was pulling for them.

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4. Kat and Patrick (10 Things I Hate About You)

On its surface 10 Things I Hate About You may seem like your typical high school movie. To be fair, it somewhat is. It adapts William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Screw (which I later found out had little or nothing to do with animal husbandry) and gives it an updated feel.  If you are unfamiliar the movie, here’s a quick rundown in bullet point form.

• Cameron wants to date Bianca
• Joey wants to bang Bianca
• Bianca has a sister named Kat
• Kat is a biatch of legendary proportions
• Kat and Bianca’s father makes a rule that Bianca cannot date unless Kat also dates
• This is a clever rule as no one wants to date Kat
• Cameron convinces Joey to pay Patrick (The school bad boy) to date Kat so that Bianca is also free to date
• Cameron and Joey vie for Bianca’s attention

The message of the movie is that it is ok to manipulate people so long as they are dumber than you. And if they are smarter than you, bribe them.

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3. Clementine and Joel (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

 

I apparently hate happy couples. They are boring to me. I don’t mind them in real life, but on screen I demand more. Eternal Sunshine is not a happy movie. It’s not really a sad movie either. It exists in a place between the two. If you’ve never seen it, I implore that you do. I don’t want to give too much of the details away, but here it goes. Joel and Clementine were together for a while. After a devastating break up, Joel runs into Clementine and she has no idea who he is. You see, rather than deal with the pain of loss, Clementine has had all memories of Joel erased. Enraged by this action Joel goes to do the same. While in the machine that zaps memories, Joel’s unconscious mind leaps from memory to memory trying to save Clementine.

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2. Marla Singer and Tyler Durden/The Narrator (Fight Club)

I really hate happy couples.

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1. Buttercup and Wesley (The Princess Bride)   

Or do I? Yes. The answer is yes I do. However, in this one instance I am willing to make an exception. You see nothing is better than true love. But a loaf of bread is better than nothing. So by that logic a loaf of bread is better than true love. Okay, my head hurts now. I had a point, but I lost it somewhere.  Anyway, these two would get my vote as “Movie Prom King and Queen”.

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So what couples in any media (not just film) do you people root for?