For fans who’ve been dying to see more meet-cutes at the movies, however, it’s about time. Given all the hoopla surrounding Marry Me’s release, expectations were obviously sky-high. So far, Marry Me has received mostly positive feedback from critics and overwhelmingly glowing reviews from moviegoers (with a 93 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes); box office-wise, the movie’s success or lack thereof after its first weekend of release has been hard to reach consensus on. Marry Me brought in $8 million from theaters, which Variety dismissed as a “wrong note” compared to industry expectations. However, as that and other outlets have stated, a slew of factors were working against the movie at the ticket booth. For starters, the Winter Olympics are on for the first time in four years and it was Super Bowl Sunday weekend. Marry Me was also simultaneously available on Peacock, where it reportedly became the platform’s most-streamed title on Friday and Saturday nights. Another factor probably keeping fans home from all movies in theaters, not just this one? The COVID-19 pandemic. After all, the No. 1 movie over Valentine’s Day weekend—Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile starring Gal Gadot—was likewise targeted to non-teenagers and likewise underperformed, with only a $12.8 million take (against a $90 million budget). All of this may leave you wondering: Do we dare hope for more rom-coms in the future? Is it possible that Hollywood will find a way to usher in a new golden age of rom-coms that can make them money while also making audiences smile? The good news is that many industry insiders, filmmakers, critics and other experts say yes. “Over the past decade or so, the studios really were making fewer romantic comedies—but the genre seems to be on the rise again at the studio level,” Scott Meslow, culture writer and author of From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (And Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy, tells Parade.com. That includes The Lost City starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, arriving March 25; Bros, the first gay rom-com from a major studio, starring Billy Eichner and Luke McFarlane and out in the fall of 2022; and another upcoming gay-rom-com, Fire Island (which Meslow describes as “a Pride & Prejudice-inspired rom-com”) starring Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang. In fact, Marry Me wasn’t even the only rom-com to arrive over the 2022 Valentine’s Day weekend: It was joined by I Want You Back with Jenny Slate and Charlie Day, and the Malin Akerman-starring A Week in Paradise. “I think the romantic comedy is one of the most under-appreciated and misunderstood genres of film,” Jason Orley, director of I Want You Back, tells Parade.com. “These are desert island movies! Movies that audiences watch over and over because they love how they make them feel. I love a movie I can watch with my family, with my wife, with my parents. One that we can quote endlessly to each other and laugh about its relevance years after it’s been made.” Malin Akerman, a rom-com veteran—she’s appeared in 27 Dresses, Wanderlust, The Proposal, Couple’s Retreat and many more—tells Parade.com the appeal of the rom-com is simple: “For audiences, it’s just a great escape and a lot of fun, a way to make fun of romance and relationships and the things that can go wrong, and ultimately that’s why people keep turning back to them. They just want to feel good for an hour and half.” Slowly but surely, the romantic comedy genre appears to be making a comeback, but how and why did rom-com output slow down so severely in the first place after appearing so indomitable at the box office for much of the 1990s and early 2000s? And what’s truly behind its resurgence? We dove deep with experts from film historians to directors to rom-com stars to examine why Hollywood hasn’t been making romantic comedies and what’s bringing them back at long last.
For starters, Hollywood was focused more on big-budget blockbusters and Oscar bait than on mid-budget romantic comedies.
Moviemaking is a for-profit venture, which means what movies get made by major studios mostly comes down to one thing: Money, and the fact that a lot of that money has lately been made by Marvel and other superhero franchises, often to the detriment of other genres. “While rom-coms typically make money, they don’t make Marvel-sized money—a problem in a Hollywood increasingly fixated on home runs instead of base hits (and willing to accept costly strikeouts in the pursuit of those billion-dollar grosses),” Meslow tells Parade.com. “Romantic comedies largely disappeared at the studios for the same reason most mid-budget movies started to disappear: Hollywood favored… massive blockbusters or traditional awards fare, with very little happening between those two poles,” he added. “I do think rom-coms were uniquely disadvantaged by this trend, because they [also] don’t tend to draw the kind of awards attention that can make a studio less nervous to greenlight, say, a mid-budget drama.” Kimber Myers, a critic for The Los Angeles Times, Crooked Marquee and other outlets, concurs. “The legacy studios are definitely making fewer romantic comedies than they were 20-30 years ago during the genre’s modern heyday, and that’s largely because they stopped being such a sure bet at the box office,” Myers explains. “There’s certainly a chicken-or-the-egg situation here; studios aren’t making as many rom-coms—and they aren’t putting as many resources behind the ones they are making—and so people don’t show up, and so they make even fewer, and so on.” Another factor in terms of rom-coms’ box office performance is that they don’t appeal as much to global audiences as franchises like Avengers, Fast and Furious, Harry Potter, James Bond, Star Wars or Disney animated features, especially in China — the biggest major box office market on the planet. A glance at the 200 worldwide highest-grossing movies of all time doesn’t have a single American romantic comedy on it. Additionally, most franchises, especially those targeted at kids, have product deals and merchandising that bring in even more cash. When’s the last time you saw action figures based on a rom-com? In an industry where profit trumps all, it’s clear that money is the main motivator in most moviemaking, and unfortunately, Harry and Sally don’t generate as much revenue as, say, Luke and Leia.
Audiences also started to crave more diverse, personal and unique stories from the rom-com genre.
Romantic comedies, for a long time, were all essentially the same: Conventionally attractive white boy meets conventionally attractive white girl, hijinks ensue, then they live happily ever after. Two problems with that formula: Audiences aren’t all white, and they get bored with the same thing over and over. Viewers craved more personal stories, as well as cultural diversity on their screens. One break from the formula in recent years that saw significant success was 2017’s The Big Sick, in which Kumail Nanjianirecounted his real-life tale of caring for a girl in a coma (based on what actually happened to his now-wife and Big Sick co-writer Emily V. Gordon), as well as his experiences dating and finding love as a Pakistani American man who didn’t want to be in an arranged marriage with a nice Pakistani American girl. The movie not only vacuumed up $56 million in box-office sales on a minuscule $5 million budget; it also tallied up heaps of nominations come awards season, including an Oscar nom for Best Original Screenplay. Should this be the new formula? In a way, Meslow says, yes—even if the specifics of the story can’t be imitated. “The Big Sick is an interesting example because it’s such a personal movie, drawn so specifically from Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani’s actual lives. As a result, I’m not sure its success can be replicated, but it is a great example of something I thought about a lot while writing this book: Audiences aren’t stupid, and they can tell when something is inauthentic,” Meslow says. “If there’s any broader lesson I wish Hollywood would pull from The Big Sick, it’s that trusting talented writers, directors and actors to tell their stories without dumbing them down for ‘mass appeal’ isn’t just a smart creative decision—it tends to be a more lucrative one.” The movie industry does seem to be slowly waking up to all the evidence that diversity can translate to dollars. Besides The Big Sick, theatrical hits like Crazy Rich Asians, streamers like Always Be My Maybe and Happiest Season and successful Black rom-coms from the 2000s and 2010s like Just Wright and I Think I Love My Wife all serve as proof that rom-com leads don’t have to be white or heterosexual for a movie to make money. Another example of authenticity that sells? The highest-grossing American romantic comedy ever, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, was likewise written by its star, Nia Vardalos, based on her actual experience of marrying a non-Greek man. Its fresh take on inter-family culture shock endeared it to audiences and gave it a significant slow burn at the box office. (Plus, like The Big Sick, it also picked up a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the Academy Awards.) “A good rom-com, with a good marketing campaign behind it, will always find an audience,” Meslow says. “Hollywood is still far behind where it should be here, but it’s lumbering toward the right direction, and I think the quality of the movies can only improve when you’re bringing together a truly diverse creative team.” Myers also believes that “a lack of diversity in movies affects box office across the board, and rom-coms are no exception.” As proof, she cites Crazy Rich Asians (“the most successful rom-com of the last 10 years,” she notes) and Love, Simon, the first studio rom-com about a gay teen, which generated $66 million in worldwide grosses on a budget well under $20 million. “There’s an opportunity for stories to be told with films that represent more than just a white woman, a white man, and their meet-cute,” Myers adds. “There’s also something to be said for having more women (especially women of color) as directors and screenwriters. Women are still the primary audience for these movies, and we don’t want to see movies filled with characters who don’t behave like any women we’ve ever met.” Orley agrees, and he took diversity in mind when casting such actors as Gina Rodriguez and Manny Jacinto in I Want You Back. “I’m really proud of the incredibly talented cast we pulled together for this film,” he says. “Hopefully, filmmakers and studios have learned in recent years that inclusion is of vital importance because audiences want to see themselves represented on screen—I don’t even think that’s a question anymore!”
We’re collectively tired of watching over-simplified “Champagne problems.”
In addition to culturally diverse casts, audiences may crave more everyman and everywoman representation onscreen, especially during tougher times (you know, like right now). “Let’s face it—nobody wants to see two traditionally beautiful Hollywood people dragging out the process of falling in love while the world is quite literally on fire,” Danielle Henderson, writer and co-host of the I Saw What You Did podcast, told us. “It’s been impossible to ignore the realities of life; our former escape hatches are not providing the same relief. Rom-coms as a genre have been slow to shift towards the types of relationships that dominate our romantic lives now. Heteronormativity and the insistence on a patriarchal model of relationships are not where it’s at for most of us.” She added, “The survival of the rom-com depends on stories expanding to include different types of love and romance. I don’t think anyone really buys into the ‘meet a person, something bad happens, something good happens, and you live happily ever after’ model anymore. Audiences are very savvy, and I think they want to see characters with a kind of depth and dimension that is present in their own lives. Like, let’s have a rom-com between two people working the night shift stocking a department store.” Third- and fourth-wave feminism, as well as the amplification of the #MeToo movement, have also changed the way scripts portray relationships. “Just watching what’s out there, I think we’re a bit more past the Pretty Woman days where the message was very different about waiting for Prince Charming,” Akerman said. “They’re a bit more real nowadays: The dialogue’s a bit more real, a bit more of our times. Gender equality is addressed, and we’re just being more open in the conversations that are being had and the jokes that are being made. It’s all shifting with the times. There’s a bit more intention behind some of them. It’s fun and entertainment, it’s popcorn films that are intended to be fun, but I do think there’s a bit more importance to the content.”
Filmmakers eschewed the “rom-com” label—and rom-com stars were pigeonholed.
Some mega-talented stars who made a healthy living in rom-coms were largely pigeonholed by casting directors as a result, and almost all of them were women: Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson (who was previously nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Almost Famous) and Drew Barrymore come to mind. Meanwhile, many directors and filmmakers turned their noses up at the “rom-com” label, as much of the genre gets unfairly labeled as “chick flicks.” That stigma stuck for a long time—even for Oscar winners. Sandra Bullock makes her rom-com comeback with The Lost City, but deliberately left the genre for more than a decade. She explained to The Wall Street Journal, “I started noticing that anytime someone was talking about that type of film, when they would say the word ‘chick flick,’ there was an ugly look on their face, and I took offense because I was a chick. All of a sudden, rom-com was in air quotes with that ugly stink face.” What’s changed for Bullock? She says, “The beauty of the last five years is that movies with romance and love and humor and pathos are now reflecting our community.” Compounding the issue: For a while, the genre was lacking in prominent directors. Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) and Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Valentine’s Day) passed away respectively in 2012 and 2016, while others moved on after they saw the writing on the wall. Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday) previously told Vulture, “Once superhero movies really became the only movie studios cared about, the experience of making a movie like mine changed. I remember when I finished The Intern, I thought, ‘I think this is it.’” Myers explains, “Star power doesn’t mean as much as it used to, and we haven’t yet found this decade’s equivalent of a Meg Ryan or a Sandra Bullock… As a critic, I’m biased, but it actually helps when the movie is good, too. Of course, great movies can be overlooked in theaters, while mediocre ones somehow entice ticket buyers, but having a film that people gush about to their friends is key. There were a lot of bad rom-coms (and few great ones) earlier in the 21st century that did not help the genre’s longevity.” Myers also believes that inherent misogyny is often at play in terms of what movies get made, which obviously affects which movies get seen. “Sexism has absolutely played a role in studios shying away from rom-coms, affecting each point of a film’s life cycle, beginning with it being greenlit in the first place, to the budget it’s given, followed by the marketing spend,” she said. “There still aren’t as many women in studio leadership roles—and working as directors—as there should be, resulting in fewer films made for and about women.” While the 1990s and early 2000s rom-com stars may have felt a bit stuck, Meslow points out that the millennial generation of actresses were able to escape being typecast by diversifying their resumés. “The next generation of celebrities did star in rom-coms—Emma Stone in Easy A and Crazy Stupid Love, Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook—but (and this is probably a good thing!) it wasn’t all they starred in,” he explained. “Previous generations of actors who came up in rom-coms tended to get pigeonholed in the genre; now, stars can move from a rom-com to an Oscar nominee to a superhero blockbuster with relative ease.” And interestingly, millennial and Gen Z audiences may be much more open to consuming rom-coms these days, notes film curator andI Saw What You Didco-host Millie De Chirico, who believes there’s much less stigma to enjoying “chick flicks” nowadays. “I certainly grew up in an era where any kind of earnest romance was seen as sort of corny,” she told us. “I feel like that’s really changed with the younger generations. They’re not afraid to be uncool for anything, basically.”
Romantic comedies have seen more success on streaming services than at the box office—but they’re making a comeback on the big screen, too.
You’ve probably noticed a huge uptick in romantic comedies on streaming services—and that’s because a lot of people are watching them! This means that there’s absolutely still a market for rom-coms, albeit it may be from a viewer’s couch at home, while audiences will still flock to theaters for “event” releases (see Spider-Man: No Way Home’s massive box office amid the omicron surge). Netflix, in particular, has pumped out a slew of romantic comedies—2019’s Always Be My Maybe, with Asian American stars AliWong and Randall Park as the leads, may be the most noteworthy given its critical and popular success—and while the streamer is notoriously elusive with their viewing data, the fact that they continue to produce so many rom-coms must mean that they’re doing quite well. The platform’s future slate of rom-coms includes Love in the Villa with Kat Graham and TomHopper; Players, with I Want You Back’s Rodriguez starring opposite Tom Ellis and Damon Wayans Jr.; Plus/Minus with LiliReinhart; and not one, but two rom-coms from the genre’s onetime reigning queen, ReeseWitherspoon: TheCactus (based on the Reese’s Book Club novel of the same name) and Your Place or Mine, written and directed by The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna and co-starring Ashton Kutcher, Zoe Chao and Jesse Williams. (No release date on any of those yet, but if you can’t wait for more rom-com care, Netflix also has Along for the Ride, directed by To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before screenwriter Sofia Alvarez and starring newcomer Emma Pasarow, arriving on April 22.) “There are promising signs that the genre is back—especially at the streamers, and increasingly at the studios. Marry Me is one great example, and that’s not even the only new J.Lo rom-com this year. We’ve also got Shotgun Wedding [also starring Lopez] later this summer,” Meslow points out. “I think streaming is where you’re guaranteed to get more rom-coms, and also where much of the most interesting work is happening. Hulu had a pretty great one-two punch in 2020 with Palm Springs and Happiest Season. But I’m eager to see how this year’s studio rom-coms perform. I’m also curious to see how rampant franchise-ization shapes the genre; at the very least, we should have two Crazy Rich Asians sequels on the horizon in the near future.” Akerman believes the global landscape is largely responsible for the rom-com resurgence, both with audiences and with filmmakers. “Coming out of the two years we’ve been in, I think people need a bit more lightheartedness,” she said. “We need some escapism, joy, and love and romance—human connection has been really lost for the past couple years, I can understand why [studios] are investing in that.” Myers says that home viewing is key to appealing to rom-com demographics right now. “While Netflix viewing numbers are still relatively opaque, rom-coms (especially ones aimed at teens like the To All the Boys and The Kissing Booth trilogies) are clearly doing well because they keep making them,” she said. “They hold all of the data on this, and they’re not going to funnel millions into what doesn’t work. The fact that these movies are doing so well with Gen Z gives me hope for the future of the genre, though I don’t know if it will translate to the big screen since younger audiences viewing habits are different than previous generations.” Next, check out the 60 best romantic movies of the century so far—ranked!
