Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Love Story

Go To

  • Awesome Music: Francis Lai's famous piano theme still holds up to this day.
  • Girl-Show Ghetto: The fact that it was a tragic romance that did very well critically and commercially meant that it was ripe for parody and mocking before long.
  • Glurge: Most of the movie, really, but especially the (in)famous lines from the film, "Love means never having to say you're sorry" and "What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?"
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In 2009, Ryan O'Neal really did lose his romantic partner, Farrah Fawcett, to cancer. In an interview during her final illness, he alluded to his famous film role by saying "It's a love story. I just don't know how to play this one. I won't know this world without her." O'Neal himself also suffered from cancer on-and-off throughout the 2000s until his own death in 2023.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Not long after this film's release came the first daily panel of Love Is..., which read: "Love Is… being able to say you are sorry."
  • Memetic Mutation: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
  • Narm Charm: The film can be considered soapy or melodramatic, but there's no denying that that's why it works.
  • Sequelitis: Oliver's Story. Neither the book nor movie are well-received by critics or fans.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: Erich Segal originally wanted to adapt The Blue Lagoon into a major major picture, however, a deal with the estate of Henry de Vere Stacpoole was not reached, causing Segal to create his own tragic love story, although the influence of The Blue Lagoon, especially the 1949 film version starring Jean Simmons, is still evident.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • The film as a whole is considered one of the most classic film examples.
    • At the end of Oliver's Story, he acknowledges that despite having ostensibly finally moved on with his life – thriving legal career, potential new relationship – he'll never truly be happy without Jenny.
      "Sometimes I wonder what I would be if Jenny were alive. And then the answer comes to me. I would also be alive."
  • Testosterone Brigade: Despite its reputation as a Chick Flick, many males turned up in droves to drool over Ali McGraw.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • When Jenny is first discovered to be sick, the doctor tells her husband, who decides that neither he nor the doctor are going to tell her. She finds out later anyways of course, but nobody ever calls Oliver or the doctor on concealing her condition from her. Patient confidentiality, at least as a part of the legal code, did not exist back then (HIPAA only became law in the late-1990's), which is why there's no backlash from the doctor telling her husband and not her. Also, doctors have always been allowed to bend the rules when it comes to next-of-kin. Whether they should is a discussion for elsewhere. Even today, at least in parts of the U.S., it's not uncommon for a doctor to tell a patient's closest relative – who probably has medical power of attorney – that the patient is terminal, but not tell the actually-dying person. Usually the official reason for doing this is to keep the person active and not-depressed (and thus alive) for as long as possible.
    • For that matter, when Oliver resigns himself to asking his father for money for treatment, he prefers to let the older man think he got some other girl in trouble and needs it for a supposed abortion, rather than admit the truth about Jenny's illness. Of course, in that case, it's also because Oliver's father didn't approve of the relationship with Jenny and cut him off financially when he got with her against his wishes.
  • Wangst: Pretty much the entirety of the sequel.


Top