10 Movies That Prove Love is Completely Overrated

Image via Complex Original

Director: Sam Mendes
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, Kathy Bates, Ty Simpkins

The endgame for most, if not all, fools in love is, of course, marriage. Starting a whole new life together. Having and raising kids. Keeping your fingers crossed that Little Joey becomes a superstar athlete and can eventually buy mommy a new Rolls Royce and daddy a man-cave complete with Kate Upton GIF posters—make enough dough, sonny boy, and anything’s possible.

Not so fast, though, lovebirds with pending nuptials. As evidenced in director Sam Mendes’ aggressively cynical and bleak Revolutionary Road, those wedding bells could actually be more like The Exorcist’s “Tubular Bells,” signaling misery to come. Because you’re not meant to marry someone just because you’re in love. Think about it this way: you love that ex who cheated on you, right? But would you want to put a ring on her finger? Nope.

Frank and April Wheeler (played by Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet, respectively) seemingly have it all: awesome kids, a beautiful suburban home. Below their marriage’s surface, however, there’s contempt, fizzled passion, and the shattering hopelessness of being trapped in lives they don’t really want. All because, back when the butterflies were fresh, love blinded them.

Consider Revolutionary Road required viewing for any man who’s thinking about proposing.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman, Mike Vogel

If Revolutionary Road’s disintegrating marriage seems too old-fashioned and too much like your parents’ union, try writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s similarly grim Blue Valentine for your “Should I get married?” needs.

Starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, it’s centered around a less affluent couple, Dean and Cindy, a couple of blue-collar folks whose love for one another can’t mask their individual problems. Dean drinks too much; Cindy is haunted by the fact that their kid isn’t his, but that of her ex-boyfriend. Thinking love can solve anything, they go through with marriage and try to let its happier moments overshadow the real identity of their child’s father and how they’re actually incompatible beyond physical attractions and the surface-level connection.

As Blue Valentine’s misery concludes, Dean and Cindy prove unable to totally separate for their kid’s sake. The cycle continues. Eventually, when little Frankie is all grown up, she’ll probably find herself in a bad relationship of her own, sticking to what’s familiar.

Yup, Blue Valentine is pretty much the ultimate anti-love movie.

Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman

Take your pick on who’s the worst exhibitor of “love” in Mike Nichols’ cynicism orgy Closer. There’s Dan (Jude Law), a man who writes obituaries for a living, cheats on his stripper girlfriend (Natalie Portman) with a photographer (Julia Roberts) with whom he becomes obsessed, and pretends to be a woman in an Internet cybersex chat room. And then there’s Larry (Clive Owen), another online sex lover who frequents strip clubs and casually asks the dancers filthy, perverted questions about the taste of her private parts, and soon enough starts cheating on his own wife.

For both guys, love isn’t so much overrated as it is dysfunctional and rotten. But sorry, ladies, perverts like them also seek it out. They’re out there, killing time by typing words like “in the butt” and “go down on me” into their MacBooks. Yes, sometimes staying single isn’t the worst option.

Director: Sarah Polley
Stars: Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, Sarah Silverman

Despite what Hallmark cards and Jennifer Aniston movies tell you, love isn’t a mutually exclusive thing. Just because one woman loves one man, that doesn’t mean said woman won’t ever fall into the L-word with another man— why else do you think divorces and couples therapy were ever invented? And why therapists have jobs?

In Take This Waltz, Michelle Williams plays the well-meaning Margot, a free-spirited writer who’s married to the best guy around, Lou (Seth Rogen). All seems well until she randomly meets the charming Daniel (Luke Kirby), a sweet-talker who’s less career-focused than Lou and, thus, more able to excite her wilder side. Infidelity ensues, leaving poor Daniel crushed and Margot thinking she’s made the right choice by eventually divorcing him and marrying Daniel.

Karma’s a you-know-what, though, and Margot’s life with Daniel gradually loses its steam and satisfies her even less than her previous one with Lou. As Margot learns the prolonged, difficult, and painful way, you can’t fix one older, broken love by finding a newer, less inhibited love. Nice guys like Lou don’t just finish last—they get lapped twice by Cupid as the little winged bastard fires burning arrows into the derrieres.

Director: Brian Gibson
Stars: Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, Khandi Alexander, Jenifer Lewis, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly, Chi McBride

This list has nothing on what Tina Turner could teach us all about love’s negative side. She could go on a worldwide speaking tour decrying love and never run out of eye-opening talking points.

All she’d need to do is relay the traumatic, dark anecdotes from her calamitous marriage to former manager Ike Turner, ferociously portrayed in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It by Laurence Fishburne. Ike's physically abusive, mentally manipulative, and, worst of all, unremorseful. Unlike the other love-battered characters in this list’s movies, Angela Bassett’s Tina, like the real-life singer did in the moment, has to pretend that everything’s all hearts and rainbows in the public, lest she bring a dark cloud above her otherwise thriving music career.

Which is the worst thing someone who’s stuck in a torturous love affair can ever do. Well, other than listen to friends brag about their “amazing” boyfriends or girlfriends.

Director: Marc Webb
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Geoffrey Arend, Chloë Grace Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Maile Flanagan

Word to Eve and Swizz Beatz—love is blind. And also blinding, leaving folks caught up in it unable to see a toxic relationship’s bigger picture and abandon ship before heartbreak occurs.

Film’s roughest example of this is Tom Hansen, (500) Days of Summer’s sad-sack main character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Dumbfounded by his crush on new co-worker Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), which happens right when he’s desperately looking for love, Tom starts a fling with her that never should have been more than a good time, since Summer’s the worst kind of commitment phobe. The deeper in love he falls, the bleaker his situation gets, with poor Tom ignoring every warning sign that Summer’s not nearly as into him. Until, gasp, he’s watching morose French art-house films alone, weeping, and spazzing out on colleagues.

All because Tom couldn’t help but be stuck in a one-sided love affair. (500) Days of Summer DVD rentals should come packaged with Kleenex packets for any guy who’s fallen for a Summer Finn of their own.

Director: James Foley
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Alyssa Milano, Amy Brenneman

Love, as a whole, is overrated. But first love, particularly the kind experienced during one’s teenage years? That shit can be murder.

All young girls have been there before. An innocent, high-school-aged daddy’s girl (Nicole, played by Reese Witherspoon) becomes smitten with the hunky, seemingly sweet dude (David, played by Mark Wahlberg) she meets at a rave. They fall in love, and it’s everything she’s ever hoped for after watching Jason Priestley and Luke Perry on her TV set. Except that David is actually an obsessive, disturbed, and dangerous maniac who decapitates her family’s dog and sexually abuses her best friend. You know, that old high school tale.

In this case, love’s downside is obvious: fall too madly into it with the wrong person, and you’re liable to put your loved ones’ lives at risk, not only yours. And, most of all, poor Fido.

Director: Adrian Lyne
Stars: Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Stuart Pankin, Ellen Foley, Fred Gwynne, Meg Mundy

Who has it worse in Fatal Attraction: Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) or his wife, Beth (Anne Archer)?

Dan, who’s happily married and professionally triumphant, falls in love with businesswoman Alex (Glenn Close), beginning a forbidden, adulterous love affair behind Beth’s back that turns nightmarish thanks to Alex being psycho. Pretty crappy, no? Now, think about Beth, Dan’s loving wife and the mother of his daughter—she’s unaware of his infidelity until Alex is standing above the bathtub she’s in holding a knife and looking like the female Norman Bates.

The answer: Love sucks for both Dan and Beth. But as for who has it worse? Beth’s pet rabbit, obviously—the damn thing gets boiled alive in a microwave!

Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis

When love goes bad, those experiencing its horrors firsthand aren’t the only ones affected by it. Ask anyone who’s tried counseling a loved one through a divorce-that’s-waiting-to-happen—the couple’s friends are never immune to the pain.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is the quintessential movie for such secondhand trauma. In it, unhappily married Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and George (Richard Taylor) constantly fight whenever he’s not getting fall-over drunk. They’re the kind of husband/wife duo who shouldn’t ever be allowed out in public together, let alone allowed to invite friends over for dinner and drinks. Insulting your husband for being unable to get it up in the sack is bad enough when you’re alone, behind closed doors—doing so in the company of folks who just want to eat some home-cooked food is a VH1 reality show come to life.

But, alas, they “welcome” George’s colleague, Nick (George Segal), and his sweet, innocent wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), into their home to inadvertently, though unavoidably, show the functioning younger couple just how terrible married life can be if love personal demons get in the way. In this case, it’s George and Martha’s inability to have children.

Director: Todd Solondz
Stars: Jane Adams, Elizabeth Ashley, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, Jared Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Molly Shannon, Louise Lasser, Jon Lovitz, Camryn Manheim, Rufus Read, Cynthia Stevenson

Earlier, we said that Blue Valentine is the ultimate anti-love movie. We lied—that (dis)honor goes to Todd Solondz’s domestic downer ironically titled Happiness, about the misery-prone Jordan family.

Oh, where to begin here? Let’s start with Joy, the youngest Jordan sibling, a meandering, middle-aged woman whose hubby breaks up with her by saying, “I’m champagne and you’re shit—until the day you die, you, not me, will always be shit.” Next, there’s Helen Jordan (Lara Flynn Boyle), the middle sister and a woe-is-me single lady whose secret admirer turns out the creepy, depressive guy next door (Philip Seymour Hoffman). And lastly, take a look at elder sister Trish’s situation: her husband (Dylan Baker) is a pedophile guilty of molesting their 11-year-old son’s friends and who admits to their kid that he masturbates whenever there’s an urge to touch him.

Good old Todd Solondz—it takes one sick and audacious dude to equate love with champagne metaphors, weirdo neighbors, and pedophilia.

Enjoy Valentine's Day, friends!