Sex, sleep and swiping: the real reasons men watch romantic films, according to survey | Romantic movies

As groups of women reserve rows of seats with friends to watch Wuthering Heights, likely to help push Emerald Fennell’s film to the top of the weekend box office, a new study suggests that men are willing to watch romantic films at home – although their motivations for doing so are mixed.

A poll of 2,000 film fans on behalf of Freeview romantic film channel Great Romance found that the top three reasons men gave for watching a romantic film were feeling close to their partner (36%), wanting a quiet life (21%) and thinking it might lead to sex (20%). 20% said such films “remind me of the magic of the time we met,” while half that number said such an activity “requires low effort but still feels like bonding.”

Among the least acceptable reasons were “It means I can sleep” (8%) and “It means I can check my phone” (4%).

No reference was made to the sexuality of those surveyed, but Great Romance’s programming focuses on heterosexual stories.

The results were that female viewers diverged significantly on some key answers, with just 15% citing not wanting to argue as a motivating factor for watching something mushy, while only 11% believed doing so might precipitate sex.

More women than men (15%) said that even though the effort was reduced, it still felt connected, and significantly more women than men cited the possibility of falling asleep during a movie as a temptation (11% vs. 8%).

The results are consistent with a similar study conducted by Richard Harris, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas, in 2007, in which he asked 250 men and women to watch a romantic movie together, then rated their level of enjoyment on a seven-point scale, with seven being the highest score. While females’ average rating was around a six, men on average rated the film – whose title has not been revealed – a 4.8. “Everyone thinks that women like romantic movies and that they drag men into them,” Harris told Reuters.

“The important thing is that the guys also liked the movies, and the choice to watch a romantic movie was usually made together as a couple, not just by the girl.”

As with Great Romance Investigation, gender is not specified, but the assumption is that the men and women invited to see the film were indeed couples, and that the film was not a classic of queer cinema.

Harris’s study also asked participants to guess the scene their partner would like to act out, as well as the scene they would like to be in. Women tended to choose romantic scenes, guessing that their male partners would choose sex scenes, but Harris’ findings revealed that far fewer of them played into this stereotype than expected.

“There are a lot of guys who go to these romantic movies and enjoy them,” he said. “I wouldn’t write off just the male audience because it’s a romantic film. I would suggest marketing to men in the audience.”

Romance films released since the Harris Poll that have explicitly attempted to cater to both genders include Palm Springs, It’s Out of My League, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and much of Judd Apatow’s work including Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

The star of the latter film, Steve Carell, recently said he believes the box office returns for his 2011 film Crazy, Stupid, Love would have been higher had the producers stuck to the original title, The Wingman. Carell believes the film’s buddy movie elements involving his and Ryan Gosling’s characters may have attracted male viewers, whether in pairs or alone, but they would have found ordering tickets for a film called Crazy, Stupid, Love embarrassing at the box office.