Great Expectations

I grew up, like every other girl, watching Disney movies. We looked to these hand-drawn princesses for everything. Assumedly, these two-dimensional worlds were like ours, thus we could expect such divine perfection as we grew older. It felt entirely plausible that I would grow up to have Ariel's perfectly flowing hair, Jasmine's size zero waist, and big doe eyes that took up half my face (a la any Disney princess in history).

The largest expectation set forth for young girls was, of course, the Prince. The plots of these movies were irrelevant. It didn't matter if the girl in question was an absent-minded mute mermaid, a narcoleptic teenager, a prom queen with a curfew and one shoe, or a helium-voiced cleaning woman with an affinity for dwarves. Some guy, some beautiful specimen of a being, would always come swooping in and save the day. Then all the conflicts would resolve of their own volition while Whats-Her-Face and Prince Amazing rode off into the sunset.

Bravo, Disney. But what young Walt obviously failed to consider was the generation of disappointed women who would have to reconcile these wild expectations with their real lives. No man actually has a castle, a noble steed or shiny, coifed hair. They have 1997 Honda Civics, commitment issues, and subscriptions to Comcast SportsNet.

Of course, Disney films are still cherished by families around the world. But when Walt passed away, that could've been it. We could have been in the clear, shutting the door on the "Great Expectations" era forever. But, as luck would have it, there was another man waiting in the wings to deliver new delusions of grandeur: Nicholas Sparks.

In case you've forgotten or you're not familiar with this guy, let's take a little tour through some of his best work:

Nights in Rodanthe

Woman's marriage sucks. She runs away from her problems, meets a random man and survives one night of extreme weather down the shore.

Outcome: Eternal love with attractive stranger.


The Last Song

Teenaged girl goes down the shore. Fixes relationship with her father. Random guy mends her broken heart.


Outcome: Eternal love with attractive stranger.


The Lucky One

Sexy soldier returns home from war. Walks across the country to find a girl he saw in a picture this one time. Gets rid of her asshole ex-husband for her.

Outcome: Eternal love with  attractive stranger  Zac Efron

 
And if you haven't had your fill of unattainable dreams yet, you haven't seen nothin' yet. This film is the mother of everything that is wonderfully unrealistic. In theaters, it made tears spontaneously fall out of people's eyes and I'm pretty sure they've started swearing in legal witnesses using a copy of this book.

The Notebook

Essentially, Ryan Gosling's hanging out in the 1940's and decides to woo this small-town girl. For whatever reason, it takes him longer than twelve seconds to do so. Thanks to the events that follow, even girls with the highest level of common sense can't help but be disappointed when their boyfriends don't do any of the following:

• climb a ferris wheel to get to them
• write them letters every day for a year
• ask them to dance when there's no music playing
• take them on a romantic twilight boat ride through a sea of swans
• build a house for them
• write their entire lives down in a notebook
• be Ryan Gosling

So thanks, Nick Sparks. The little girls with big dreams circa the Disney era are now grown women riding a wave of even higher expectations. With that said, The Little Mermaid and The Notebook are two of my favorite movies. So good. Can't wait til my handsome stranger emerges from the fog, sweeps me off my feet, builds us a house (no, a castle!) and we live happily ever after.