Rom-Com gets more open ended as time goes by

I got to see FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL last night and really enjoyed it. I've long thought Jason Seigal was solid young actor and now I can see he's got some writing chops as well. But the film got me thinking, how best do you end a romantic comedy these days? Endings are possibly the hardest thing to pull off in a story and it's interesting to see how they have changed in movie formulas over the years.

In classic romantic comedies like BRINGING UP BABY or ROMAN HOLIDAY (just to pick 2 at random) at the end of the film it implied if not established that the couple will end up married, forever. Happily ever after. However in contemporary films, in the end the couple are more vaguely together, and are willing to 'give it a shot' or 'see how it goes.' It's almost as if they are leaving room for a sequel.

I was thinking about this last night and I honed in on the idea that there was a single turning point for this shift in romantic movie endings. It's THE GRADUATE. Of course not all cinema immediately was changed, but it's another example of that film's great legacy. The protagonists ride off into the sunset toward their happily ever after. And it slowly dawns on them... that this is not really all that easy. And romantic ending were never really the same again.