Short Takes

I'll Have What She's Having
By Daniel M. Kimmel
Ivan R. Dee, 294 pp., illustrated, $26.95

In classic Hollywood romantic comedies, the hero and heroine "meet cute." Film critic and chronicler Daniel Kimmel "titles cute" in this homage to the genre, borrowing from "When Harry Met Sally . . ." the punch line that lingers long after the plot has faded from memory.

From the all-but-forgotten 1932 "Trouble in Paradise" to the overstuffed 2003 "Love Actually," Kimmel traces the trajectory of the romantic comedy across 15 films whose behind-the-scenes complications sometimes rivaled those onscreen for farcical effect. "It Happened One Night," generally considered the granddaddy of them all, almost missed being made altogether, so unenthusiastic were its director, Frank Capra, and its stars, Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. Half a century later, as the multiplexes reverberated to the boom of special effects, the Hollywood comedy-romance was quietly rescued from obsolescence by refugees from the small-screen world of TV, such as Garry Marshall and Rob Reiner.

We can quibble with Kimmel, who finds room for "Arthur" but not for "The Lady Eve," and who rehashes yet again the Marilyn melodramas afflicting the sublime "Some Like It Hot." But we can't fault his affection for the movies that have been teaching us how to fall in love since the talkies first talked.

Good-bye and Amen
By Beth Gutcheon
Morrow, 256 pp., illustrated, $24.95

Always a tyrannical mother, especially where her middle child, Monica, is concerned, Sydney Moss has arranged one final act of tyranny from the grave - the "middle-aged orphans' lottery," as she, or rather her crisply satirical ghost, calls it. "Good-bye and Amen," the sequel to Beth Gutcheon's "Leeway Cottage," finds the three recently bereaved siblings gathered, along with their spouses and children, at the family's sprawling summer "cottage" in Maine, pawing as decorously as possible through the leavings of their late parents' long and well-upholstered lives.

Gutcheon tells her story economically and eccentrically through a monologue montage, in which siblings, spouses, children, and family friends chime in sequentially, constructing a bittersweet comic epic of relationships past and present - particularly Monica's marriage to her narcissistic clergyman husband - while sketching in sepia and sentiment a portrait of successive generations of privileged WASPs at play among their own on the coast of Maine. In a clever metafictional touch, there is even a family photo album matter-of-factly inserted into the pages of the novel, a visual complement to Gutcheon's talent for creating fictional characters so convincingly real that we almost feel we could sit down with them and join in the bickering.

Free-Range Chickens
By Simon Rich
Random House, 129 pp., $17

As Simon Rich is only 24 years old, we can understand why the humor in these miniature whimsies dwells on the humiliations of childhood and adolescence. One features excerpts from a teenage girl's diary, blatantly bowdlerized for her father's snooping eyes. Another bit is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story in which the preteen reader gets to play a "Corporate Software Designer in Poughkeepsie" whose heroic choice is between going to work and being bored, or calling in sick and being bored.

Following a well-worn path, Rich graduated from Harvard and the Lampoon directly to "Saturday Night Live," which hasn't been funny since before he was born. Most of these pieces follow the familiar SNL style: a promising gag revolves frenetically on its axis, going nowhere. Rich clearly has brains and ambition. He still needs to take that giant step from snarky to witty if he wants to earn the comparisons to Steve Martin and Woody Allen that the book's press release tosses about like public relations confetti.

Amanda Heller is a critic and editor who lives in Newton.