It's funny, a long time ago, I was thinking pretty seriously about writing a movie called Rom-Com, which is an abbreviation for Romantic Comedy. I still like the idea, but I could never really explain to people how it wasn't Date Movie. Basically, the difference is that Date Movie skewered SPECIFIC romantic comedies, whereas Rom-Com would have skewered the "rules" of romantic comedies. Because of this, I came up with a bunch of cliches, which I will now offer to you. May you have better luck with them than I did.
There's the "meet cute," which basically says that the romantic leads will meet for the first time in some kind of adorable way, whether it be that they hate each other, or that they kept missing each other by mere inches, until they finally literally bump into each other, or that he's in her seat on the airplane, and they bumbly correct the mistake, etc.
Her friends absolutely hate him, but she's convinced there's something to him beneath the surface. Some extensions of this are that her friends are head over heels for the guy, but he's only interested in her, even though she can't stand him. Throughout the movie, she learns that there's more to him beneath the surface. Another take on this is that his friends think she's hot, but when they realize he's not ditching her after he's had his way with her, they start to think something's wrong with him, and become determined to break them up. As the movie goes on, they realize that he has genuine love for the girl beneath the surface.
The guy has some hurdles to overcome before the girl can trust him. He finally overcomes them, only to have her learn something about him, or to do something stupid, either one of which is misconstrued as him betraying her in the most personal way possible. She abruptly breaks it off with him, leaving him devastated and considering the possibility of actually doing the thing that would be unforgivable. However, when push comes to shove, he realizes that he can't do the thing, because it would hurt her and, wouldn't ya know it, he's in love with her after all, leading him to the final cliche.
Which is declaring his absolute love in a public, pun-filled way. Probably just at the last second. Like, she's about to marry someone else, but he bursts in, "I have an objection." (That's especially good if one or the other of them is a lawyer.) Or she's about to fly to Guam forever, but he stops her just before boarding, "Looks like your flight's gonna be delayed," to which she might pun back, "There might be some turbulence up ahead," and then they embrace with something like, "I'm all out of airplane puns... so how about we kiss instead," and then they do and the whole airport applauds, despite these two jackasses making them late.
I'm sure there were some others, but let me know if those are helpful.
-- lifedosntmitate
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