Picture this, now Voice mails for Isabelle, these two movies have a pattern I have been noticing lately in romantic movies : the intellectualization of love. It is also what I think is wrong with romcoms nowadays. What is the intellectualization of love?, read on to find out.
The Core Concept: The Intellectualization of Love
I call the intellectualization of love that tendency movies, especially in the rom-com genre, have nowadays to portray love as if it were a therapy session. They write characters who talk like therapy textbooks, self-help mantras, or political agendas.
For example, women nowadays are only portrayed as strong and independent; otherwise, they are seen as too needy. She can want a relationship, but she must not need a man. Do you see where I am going? This concept shows up in the lines the actors (especially the main leads) deliver, or in the overall relationship dynamic.
The Cheap Lines In Movies
I was watching Voicemails for Isabelle, the Netflix movie recently and, at one point, Jill shouts at the male lead, “I don’t need a man!” Taken completely out of context, I can understand the sentiment. But this is the exact same girl who, just a few scenes prior, was expressing how much she wanted a deep, romantic encounter to make her feel something again. Shouting that line in the heat of anger felt incredibly cheap and unnecessary. It didn’t belong there. Something similar happened in Picture This toward the ending of the film, where right before confessing her feelings, the main female lead gave a speech about being an independent woman first.
Writers use buzzwords and modern mantras (like Jill shouting “I don’t need a man!”) as a shield. They think that if a female lead says the “right” feminist line, or if a male lead acts soft and sensitive, it automatically makes the relationship healthy and progressive. But it just feels cheap. It ruins the organic chemistry and makes you wonder why you were watching the movie in the first place.
I was actually having a passably good time watching the movie until that moment, but that scene made me instantly uncomfortable. It’s like when you’re thoroughly enjoying a meal, and you suddenly chew on a piece of sand. Do you know that feeling? It is a deeply unpleasant, feeling that ruins the entire experience.
I completely understand the modern push to write strong, independent female characters, or even to portray healthier relationship dynamics—I am the first to call out red flags in movies. But sometimes, love is just messy. Human beings are not robots; we are flawed. Besides, dropping clichéd, contradictory lines into a script isn’t as clever as writers think it is. At the end of the day, the primary goal of a movie is to entertain us, not lecture us.
They need to stop trying to teach us how to love.
Power Imbalance, or Passive Men as a Green Flag
Hollywood is not the only one guilty of this; I was watching a K-drama recently and noticed that dynamic as well. I am talking about Perfect Crown. Although the love story is good, I sincerely believe it could have been better. In order to have a strong female lead, they made the male lead look so incapacitated (and I know that there was a shift in the relationship dynamic afterward), but the relationship seemed deeply unbalanced at the beginning. The female lead was doing a lot of the heavy lifting, meanwhile the male lead, who was introduced to us in the opening scene as a strong man—seemed so incapacitated later on with a total lack of leadership.
In trying to intellectualize modern romance, movies often think a strong woman requires a passive, helpless man. From a pragmatic standpoint, this is a massive red flag. A healthy relationship requires polarity, mutual respect, and shared agency, not one partner constantly pulling the strings or dominating the other to prove a point. (Anyway, I went into more detail about this specific case in my Perfect Crown review!)
Modern movies are so busy trying to teach us what love should look like according to an agenda that they forget to show us how real, healthy human beings actually interact. They give us speeches instead of substance, and slogans instead of actual emotions. The old rom-coms were not all perfect, for sure! But at least in those love stories, the emotions seemed sincere. We need more sincerity and less lecturing.
Bring back genuine romance—falling in love is not cringe!
Let me know what you think in the comments. Is it just me, or have you noticed it too?
XO
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