Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in The Break-Up; (below) Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral

Romantic comedy (or ?rom com?) has become a studio staple over the past 20 years: a fair bet for reasonable profits, with the occasional runaway success.

The ?rom com? genre, however, changes from place to place, with the romantic and the comedy elements changing from country to country. For a nation not renowned for its romantic prowess, Britain has proven remarkably adept at producing romantic comedies that prove to be successful in most corners of the globe. It all started with Four Weddings and a Funeral?s phenomenal success in America, with the same formula being repeated ad nauseam.

Let us begin by looking at the dynamics between the principal characters in the British ?rom coms?. In Four Weddings and a Funeral, a bumbling charming English gent (Hugh Grant) falls for an upfront American woman. In Notting Hill, a bumbling charming English gent (Grant again) falls for an upfront American woman.

As one may have noticed, writer Richard Curtis is already bursting at the seams with original dynamics between his lead characters. The term ?if it ain?t broke?? has never been more accurately applied than to the slew of recent rom coms. The progression of recent English rom coms can be seen thus: they roared with laughter at Four Weddings, they giggled at Notting Hill, they sighed at Love Actually and they groaned at Wimbledon.

Bridget Jones? Diary and its successor The Edge Of Reason is yet another example of a British film trading on the foreigner?s perceptions of what English people are like. Funnily enough, both films also star Hugh Grant, opposite a Renee Zellweger boasting one of the most astonishingly accurate English accents that an American has ever affected.

The American rom com has different rules and gags. Much more blunt and slapstick, the American rom com trades less on cultural differences and embarrassment, and much more on what one might term ?spectacle? ? in its various different forms.

For instance, Something About Mary kicks off with a man trapping his you know what in his fly as he is about to embark on his high school leaving prom. In Four Weddings Hugh Grant pathetically jumps out of a cupboard with a pencil (?Found it!?) as two of his friends are consummating their marriage, but in Something you see Ben Stiller writhing around with his wedding tackle fastened to his trousers.

The ?gross-out? method of comedy is far more prevalent in the US than in the UK. This and a wide selection of social faux pas have become the comedic retort to romantic mush, and thus ingeniously keep everybody happy.

Pretty Woman has held sway over two generations of young women. With its cod-Pygmalion story line and Richard ?the gerbil? Gere?s strong on-screen chemistry with Julia Roberts, the film was an enormous hit at the box office and came to redefine the genre for the dawn of the 1990s.

One cannot underestimate the power of successful TV shows on rom coms, with films like the upcoming The Break-Up using Jennifer Aniston to pull millions of Friends fans. The film by all accounts seems to be an extrapolation of a Friends theme, and will have similar traits in terms of humour.