Over the weekend I watched Wedding Crashers and Big Fish and in both movies we see that a nice guy wins the heart of the beautiful girl right before she is about to marry a complete jerk. I find this to be a regular occurrence in many movies. Are there (good/enjoyable/watchable) films where the hero takes the girl from a relatively nice guy?
Off the top of my head, how about:
16 candles
There’s something about Mary
Pretty in Pink (sort of)
Reality Bites
There was My Best Friend’s Wedding, where the heroine (Julia Roberts) decides to steal the fiance of a very nice Cameron Diaz. Kinda what you are asking, except the sexes are reversed.
The Graduate
If sex reversal is allowed, there’s Sound of Music.
Plot-ending spoiler for My Best Friend’s Wedding:
IIRC, she fails to do this at the end.
Are we referring to The Geek losing Samantha to Jake Ryan or Jake losing Caroline (how cool is the name Haviland Morris by the way) to The Geek. I’m not sure either of them fit the criteria. The Geek and Sam were really never dating and I haven’t seen it in a while but it seemed he was more than happy to help Jake woo her because he ended up (sort of) with Jake’s girlfriend (and the two of them seemed to break up amicably thus never really ‘losing’ each other).
My addition (if sex reversal is allowed) is Serendipity. Jonathan was all set to marry Halley Buchanan, who was a really nice (and not to mention hot) girl and Jonathan, through a series of coincidences ends up with Sara Thomas who is also very nice.
Not Another Teen Movie was a parody of various teen movie cliches. One of the jokes was two characters, who were both in love with the lead actress, arguing about who she would pick in the end.
“She’ll pick me. I’m the self-obsessed jock who’s reformed and become a sensitive guy because of her. We’re bound to end up together. Like in She’s All That.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m the best friend who’s always secretly loved her and she’ll realize I’m more than just a friend in the final scene. Like Some Kind of Wonderful.”
Same with Corpse Bride, if animated reversal is allowed too.
Let’s not forget classics like The Philadelhia Story - Jimmy Stewart, the epitome of nice guys, loses Katherine Hepburn to Cary Grant.
Liar Liar might fit.
A very selfish and somewhat amoral guy(Jim Carrey) gets divorced. And his ex-wife hooks up with a really nice but boring other guy(Cary Elwes). Carrey eventually gets her back when he learns to be a nice, moral guy.
Except that Jimmy Stewart wasn’t the nice guy in that movie. The two male leads were cast against type (to great effect), with Cary Grant as the upstanding, boy-scout type, and Jimmy Stewart as the rogue.
How dare you call Cary Elwes boring looking! He was lovely in The Princess Bride. My girlfriend wholeheartedly agrees.
Sweet Home Alabama is a great example of this. Even at the end, the good, urban husband shows how great he is by gladly stepping aside for Reese Witherspoon’s character’s sake.
Reese Witherspoon leaves her nice guy fiancee played by Patrick Dempsey for her “rough around the edges” supposedly ex-husband.
Uh, sorry?
In Sleepless in Seattle Meg Ryan falls for Tom Hank’s character, leaving her nice, boring, and weak fiance played by Bill Pullman behind.
An Ideal Husband as recently done with Rupert Everett has him winning the heart of Miss Mabel over the apparently very nice Tommy. There’s even a shot of him attending their wedding with a sad and wistful expression. Poor Tommy! But some things are clearly just meant to be.
Oh, I forgot - The Notebook. Nice, loving, good-looking wealthy businessman loses his fiance to nice, working class artist-type. I felt sorry for him.
I had blocked that film from my memory.
Serendipity - both of the main characters left their perfectly nice fiances.