1. The British man. He says shitty things and acts like a total arsehole but it’s OK because he has a beautiful posh British accent.
2. The hot neighbour who never speaks or has his character developed in any way. He just smiles and is shirtless in windows, mostly. Does he have a job? How does he pay his rent? Does he have an inner life? Maybe. Buried deep, deep below those rock-hard abs.
3. The sort of grimy stoner guy who doesn’t really shower and only wears stained band T-shirts who teaches the uptight, bitchy lead that she just needs to chill. He teaches her with sex.
4. The guy whose entire personality is that he smokes weed. We get it.
5. The man whose entire personality is based on his having thick, dark, luscious, floppy, wavy, disheveled hair. Mmm.
6. The guy who goes to “COLLEGE” and is in a frat, whose sole purpose in the plot is to set apart the non-terrible love interest, who crosses some incredibly low threshold for human decency, causing the protagonist to realise she might be in love with him.
7. The guy who wears glasses, to show that he is thoughtful. He’s been to the theatre. He reads books. Books by WOMEN. (Sometimes.)
8. The guy who wears cardigans. To show he’s sensitive.
9. The man who is actually a grumpy arsehole?? All the time???? But everyone acts like it’s sexy and a good thing???????? Because of the precedent of Mr Darcy, people are supposed to assume that he, too, must be a generous, loving man???????????????
10. The really average-looking guy with an incredibly hot supermodel wife. He constantly complains about how unattractive she is, how much she nags him, and how he wishes he wasn’t married. Women are the worst!
11. The rich man who’s a bad man. There’s also a poor man, who is hotter, who the protagonist is meant to end up with, just as soon as she has realised that money is not all that matters, and dumps the bad rich man.
12. The best friend, who’s just friends with her, just really, really good friends……………………………….. until he isn’t.
13. The nerd, who was only ever meant to be her tutor…………………... until he wasn’t.
14. The older colleague at the office. He will at some point touch the romantic heroine on the leg in a way that he imagines reveals paternal love, but actually reveals his long history of sexual harassment cases.
15. The dad who plays golf. He’s the only guy our heroine can truly trust. He kind of just plays golf — that’s his thing. He’ll probably have a heart-to-heart with the troubled male lead, on a golf course.
16. Zach Galifianakis.
17. The male doctor. He can cure anything. Even a broken heart. Which is exactly what he does, 30 minutes in, when they bump each other into the shops. He has his stethoscope around his neck at all times.
18. The guy who's "great with kids!" because he manages to look after his baby cousin for three minutes without dropping her on the floor. This touching moment makes the hard-ass, career-driven female lead realise that she DOES want children after all.
19. The guy who decides to ruin the fucking wedding instead of saying how he felt, like, a week ahead of time.
20. Owen Wilson.
21. The man who’s not monogamous, because look, it’s just not natural for men to be monogamous!
22. The man who is 30-plus years older than the woman, which is never addressed. True love transcends age, you know?
23. The even older married older man who hits on 21-year-olds, which he thinks is just hilarious banter, but actually reveals his long history of sexual harassment cases.
24. The man who is either extremely whimsical or possibly a serial killer.
25. The guy who lives in a giant art studio with bare brick walls. He just loves art so much. He prefers it to heating, and other basic physical comforts. Oh, how he suffers.
26. The man who CHEATS. The CHEATING SCUM. (This man is, however, a very useful plot device, for the non-cheating-scum character to be able to point to and say, "I am, unlike this guy over here, not cheating scum.")
27. The guy with black bedsheets. Where does he buy them from? How does he keep them stain free? Just some of the many mysteries we’ll never find the answer to.
28. The female lead’s gay best friend. He just loves to shop, gossip, wear bow ties, be entirely sexless, and embody every single other reductive stereotype of gay men that has ever existed on screen.
29. The best friend of the romantic male lead who doesn’t really have much going on with his life but he’s always available to hang out at “the bar” (no specific bar, they always know the right one) for a few beers, or meet for a three-hour pre-work breakfast and listen to his buddy complain about his love life.
30. The barman at the bar. He always knows exactly which beer to give our guys when they walk in and order “a beer”. He keeps a special bottle of scotch for when they’ve had a hard day. They never seem to settle their bill but he just does this job for the love of it – who cares if he’s got utility bills to pay?
31. The aged newspaper editor. He does most of his editing by SHOUTING at our female protagonist, who manages to live in a penthouse on one column a week. He has a good heart really.
32. The man who is a photographer/artist/filmmaker/poet, who’s been a bit stuck lately. When will he find his muse? Ah, here she is. Thank you, muse. They won’t end up together, but at least he has been freshly inspired by their torrid affair and will now win many awards for his photography/art/filmmaking/poetry.
33. The implausibly feminist historical costume drama man.
34. The hot guy who never wears a shirt in his own house. Or in public, for some reason.
35. The dude who cries when his sports team does sports things that are either good or bad.
36. The guy who fills a room with flowers, and/or makes at least one other grand romantic gesture in the course of the film.
37. The man who is old and/or dead now but was at some point in history young and hot, as we will now get to see in sepia tones.
38. The man who is FUNNY! And therefore seems to get away with being terrible.
39. The teenage stepson who only looks up from his PlayStation to make slightly lewd comments.
40. The sunglasses-wearing police officer with a beer gut and a moustache. He only speaks in old-timey New Yorker slang, even if the movie is set in LA/Michigan/London.
41. The man who actually embodies everything you have ever desired in a romantic partner, which you would never admit, but suspect has spoiled several perfectly good relationships for you simply by existing in your imagination.