I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)
Does *Edward Scissorhands *count? He didn’t actually get the girl, as such.
I am thinking the original poster is misremembering the scene where a hot older woman makes a play for Mitch and he runs to Jordan the Nerdy girl. The blonde only appears in that scene (until the end) and isn’t exactly chasing Mitch.
Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch has several interconnected retold fairy tales. I can’t remember how the Beauty and the Beast tale ends but I seem to remember it not ending with a transformation.
A Civil Campaign in the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, perhaps. Ekaterin Vorsoisson rejects her other better looking suitors for the dwarfish, scarred Miles Vorkosigan.
Jane Eyre, although Jane and Rochester are both somewhat beastly. Each of them wins the other from a more attractive rival.
Michael Rutherford’s (the poet, not the musician) short story, “The Tale and Its Master,” though the ending isn’t “happily ever after” (but his love is ugly throughout).
There’s no constant other suitor, but the (80s) B&TB TV series had Catherine falling for Vincent without him ever changing his form.
Whom she already found attractive while still married to her first husband, who was physically fine but mentally insufferable (Komarr). Then again, I’m not sure any of Miles’ ladies count… part of his problem with courting Ekaterin was that, except for Elena Bothari who he only fumbled around, his other sexual interests had merrily dragged him into bed (or down to the floor, in Taura’s case).
Remembered another one: Master of the Five Magics, by Lyndon Hardy (a fantasy as written by a physics professor, and it shows). One of the major plotlines is that the protagonist, along with a wide variety of other suitors, is seeking the hand of the Queen. In the end, she doesn’t go with the fabulously rich man, or with the valorous hero, or any of the other “standard” suitors, but with a barbarian she met on her journeys who didn’t do anything in particular besides turning her on.
And at the end she ends up with the other nerdy guy (Laslo), the one she had been looking for the whole time. Having sex with the smartest students was sort of her thing.
My kids love that one.
I’ll let the OP decide if it counts, but Lewis Skolnick is no more aesthetically appealing at the end of Revenge of the Nerds than he was at the beginning.
And Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal.
I’ve never seen any of Nerds (or if I have I didn’t know it) and only bits & pieces of Hal. In the latter, does Paltrow’s character have a rival for her lover’s affections?
No, not specifically. It’s just that Hal expresses his preferences for female companionship in such a way that he’s not likely to give her character a second glance. So, in a sense, every attractive woman is her rival. Until the end, of course, when he chooses her, even knowing that she doesn’t quite look like what he had always assumed was his feminine ideal.
As far as Revenge of the Nerds, the hot cheerleader dumps this guy for this guy.
She has a scene earlier in the movie, where she hits on Val Kilmer’s character.
nm
:: considers asking ::
:: decides he doesn’t want to know ::
:: cuts self piece of coconut-cream pie ::
I’ve never seen it, but doesn’t Shallow Hal end with Hal still under the curse or whatever to see Paltrow’s character as thin? It seems to me that that counts as a makeover.
Am I understanding the premise? Would The Truth About Cats & Dogs count, in which we are supposed to believe that Uma Thurman, who looks like a face painted on an egg, is more desirable than Janeane Garofolo, with whom she competes for the affection of handsome Ben Chaplin, who’s heard Janeane on the radio and is charmed by her intellect and wit? So they pull the switcheroo and in the end blah blah true love.