The Hollywood Book of Love: An Irreverent Guide to the Films That Raised Our Romantic Expectations

My copy of "The Hollywood Book of Love" has the subtitle "An Irreverent Guide to the Films that Raised Our Romantic Expectations." The line "From True Romance and Blushing Brides to Tawdry Trysts and Femme Fatales" appears on the back cover instead of on the front as the subtitle. Actually, I prefer the irreverent guide subtitle because that seems to be Parish's main goal: to show how romantic movies from this (and previous) generations raised our romantic expectations to unrealistic levels. He provides highly entertaining examples of movies that create hopes for romance, sex, and love that cannot possibly be fulfilled in real life. "The Hollywood Book of Love" works on many different levels. It provides a thorough guide book to romantic movies; it offers a behind-the-scenes look at many of the selected films; and it gives the reader some broad questions to consider about the gap between the illusion and reality of romantic love. Leslie Halpern, author of Reel Romance: The Lovers' Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies and Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science.

This book shows a wonderful depiction of all types of love in movies from all eras. It is an easy and fun read all the way through showing the loves and heartaches through the years in some of Hollywoods greatest stories.A must have for any true romantic... whether it's the irony of love you enjoy or just want to remember the key love stories of old.

Parish has written dozens of books on American film, and his knowledge is vast. This book makes shrewd use of that knowledge, but lightens it with delightful flights of humor. This makes for a enjoyable, compulsive read. The background is there, but it's not delivered in a stuffy or academic way. For example, in his section on Love Story, Parish writes: "As you sniffle through this feature, bear in mind that these characters give shallowness new meaning. For example, our clean-cut hero asks over the soundtrack mourningfully, 'What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?' His brilliant reply includes that she was beautiful (certainly a matter of personal taste) and that 'she loved Mozart and Bach...and the Beatles.' That's the best he can come up with? Oh, brother!"

Anyone who has ever been in love or out of love and loves movies will love this book. This lighthearted look at what the movies show us about love, romance, marriage, and break-ups is great fun for anyone who has ever sat in a movie theater imagining what romance should be all about. Following a number of categories this book tells about Love Boats, Bad Boys and Girls, Drifters, Break-ups, Marriage and much more as shown in the movies. It is full of the great lines people utter in movies that we wish we could have thought of. But be warned, the Book of Love shows us that the reality of movie love would often be much different when played out in real life. There are also many interesting sidebars in the book, many of which show us that the lives of our romantic heroes were often a far cry from the people they portrayed.

James Parish has done it again! He has written the perfect companion volume to his best-selling "Hollywood Book of Death". With a marvelous sense of humor he explores what Hollywood has done with the themes of love, marriage, relationships, etc. This entertaining look at Hollywood and what films tell us about ourselves (or what we would like to think of ourselves) is enthusiastically recommended.