Our Guide to the Best, Most Blubber-Worthy Tearjerkers
When the teen-cancer love story The Fault in Our Stars opens in theaters on June 6, we’re expecting a spike in tissue sales as America mops up those tears. We’re also wondering if TFIOS will bring a fresh crying jag of tearjerker movies to theaters. In preparation, we decided to take a deep dive into despair and catalog the essential elements for a heart-wrenching sob-athon.
Yahoo Movies dissected the weeper world, breaking it down into seven sub-genres and defining each based on narrative themes and most memorable blubber-inducing contributions to pop culture. A couple of minor caveats: First, some movies have been placed in what we deemed the most appropriate subgenre even though they easily could have landed in two or three. Second, this effort involved hard science, and obviously there’s no crying in hard science.
Just kidding! Man, there’s going to be so much crying.
1. The Romantic Tearjerker
This is the quintessential tearjerker type, the one most of us think of when terms such as “weepie” are invoked. These are love stories about people who refuse to couple even though they belong together, who love each other but are torn apart, or who kiss each other super-hard in the pouring rain, because that’s just what you do when you’re Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. Basically, these are the kinds of movies Rita Wilson was talking about when she lost it while describing An Affair to Remember in this meta-moment from Sleepless in Seattle.
Examples: An Affair to Remember, Love Story, The Way We Were, Ghost, Truly Madly Deeply, The Notebook, Brokeback Mountain
Signifiers: Letters that go unread; words that go unsaid; kisses that occur as the score reaches a crescendo; kisses that occur in the rain as the score reaches a crescendo; moments of intense mourning; heart-wrenching farewells; deathbed scenes
Signature quote: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” from 1970’s Love Story. This is actually a blatantly false statement, but because a bereft Ryan O’Neal uttered it, turning it into the official Romantic Tearjerker Catchphrase.
Signature moment: The final scene of The Notebook, which has been known to induce sob seizures even in the most passionate Nicholas Sparks haters. (Megaspoiler: If you don’t want to know how the movie ends, do not watch.)