I heard a male agent once say that if the heroine of a script didn't face higher stakes, he couldn't see how someone would emotionally invest in her. OK, so the character is never chased to the edge of a cliff or anything, but plenty of successful movies exist with mediocre stakes.
Was anyone ever truly emotionally invested in whether Owen Wilson got it together in "Wedding Crashers"? It could be argued that the stakes of our movie were at least as high as learning to act like a grown man when you are one, so what gives?