Romance; Drama; Coming of Age

Romance

When Marty tells Clara's bum of a blind date that you can't just walk out on a gal like that, his sense of justice and chivalry is the prelude to a beautiful, everyday romance.

While Marty and Clara are no Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, their love story is just as sweet: two underdogs finding the beauty in each other. What's more romantic than that?

Drama

Comedy plus tragedy equals drama, and Marty has both of these in spades. We're totally happy to laugh at the sad relentlessness of everyone asking when Marty's going to finally get married, and totally ready to sigh watching him get brushed off by some woman at the Stardust Ballroom.

His mother Teresa cracks wise, saying that when her sister finally smiles, "we're gonna have a holiday," and though we giggle at that, we know how hard it must be for Catherine to enter this final stage of life, "waiting for the coffin."

Like any non-bummer drama, we understand that Marty's characters have legit real-world problems. We feel for them… without also wanting to turn it off for fear the story will drag us down into the depths of depression.

Coming of Age

This movie chronicles the twenty-four hours when Marty becomes independent. It isn't that he hasn't been an adult—it's just that he's been a too-good son, living under the thumb of his mother.

When Marty started to support the family after the death of his father, he didn't become a man—he became his father's proxy. For too long, rejection and PTSD/depression has made it easy for him to stay in the family home without taking any chances or even making any major decisions. Now that the rest of his siblings are married and it's just him and his mother in the house, this is becoming clear… even to Marty himself.

So while Marty isn't The Sandlot or even Almost Famous, it's still the tale of a man becoming himself and claiming the happiness that he deserves.