Romantic comedies have been in a slump for the last decade-plus, but a small batch featuring recognizable stars are set to premiere over the next few weeks. This seems as good a time as any to take a state-of-the-union look at the genre.
This week, “Shotgun Wedding” starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel premieres on Amazon. It’s an action rom-com about a couple’s destination wedding in the Dominican Republic that turns chaotic when they and their guests are taken hostage.
Feb. 10 is something of a mini-bonanza with “Your Place or Mine” on Netflix (Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as longtime, long-distance friends who realize they might be in love) and “Somebody I Used to Know” on Amazon (Alison Brie and “Insecure” alum Jay Ellis as exes who still have a spark even though he’s engaged to someone else).
I haven’t seen any of these films yet but they all feature rom-com veterans, which is a promising start. I’m hoping for the best, even if it seems like most of Hollywood has lost enthusiasm for the genre.
Scott Meslow is the author of “From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy” and he said, “If you look at the types of rom-coms that were studios’ bread and butter in the early 2000s — like ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ or ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ — that’s more of a Netflix thing or a Hulu thing at the moment.”
As with any movie that bypasses a theatrical release for streaming, it’s hard to gauge whether newer titles have the kind of cultural penetration of movies of old.
“Because streaming is what it is, there’s a lot of spaghetti thrown against the wall,” Meslow said. Two big rom-coms for Hulu include “Happiest Season” starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis, and “Palm Springs” starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. Both films came out in 2020.
Netflix’s “Always Be My Maybe,” starring Ali Wong and Randall Park, came out a year earlier in 2019 and it was good — spiky and funny and warm all at once — and yet it’s not a movie you hear people reference much. By contrast, Meslow thinks the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” teen rom-com franchise, also on Netflix, has a good chance of becoming a cultural touchstone in the same way “Sixteen Candles” or “Can’t Hardly Wait” were for generations who came of age in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
But it’s been a while since we’ve seen a rom-com with the staying power of something like 1989′s “When Harry Met Sally.” Every time autumn rolls around and the weather turns chilly, I see someone post an aspirational image from the film of Billy Crystal in a cable knit sweater, curled up with a book. Memes are far from the only way to gauge pop cultural interest. But they are persistent and self-reinforcing. And newer rom-coms seem to lack that presence in the culture at large. “Part of the problem,” Meslow said, “is we’re measuring so much in billion-dollar worldwide grosses and I think the loss of base hits is a huge mistake.”
Another problem: Marketing.
I wrote about this not long ago: Despite Clooney and Roberts’ names above the title, there was an entire swath of potential moviegoers who were surprised to learn, two weeks after “Ticket to Paradise” opened in theaters, that the film even existed.
Until fairly recently, we learned about new films through a combination of TV, print and radio ads, plus coming attractions in theaters themselves. Even if you weren’t paying much attention, you absorbed an awareness through that pop culture osmosis. But that kind of monoculture doesn’t exist anymore.
For many, streaming has replaced prime-time TV, Spotify has replaced the radio and social media has us split off into our own private algorithms. Which is why promotion for certain TV shows or movies might never cross your screen.
Rom-coms started trickling back into theaters last year. There were big stars attached, if not much in the way of memorable filmmaking: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in “The Lost City,” Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in “Marry Me,” Julia Roberts and George Clooney in “Ticket to Paradise.”
Sidebar: Are common-phrases-as-titles still serving these types of movies? My addled brain needs something more specific if I have any chance of retaining it. But it really does feel like you could insert any idiom — “You Win Some, You Lose Some,” “A Blessing in Disguise,” “It’s Not Rocket Science” — and audiences will think: Yep, that’s a rom-com. I guess that’s a marketing hook of its own.
But why are all the leads middle-aged?
“They are previous rom-com stars,” said Meslow, “and that’s what’s fascinating to me: They are returning to the genre after leaving it dormant for a long time. Particularly Sandra Bullock, who had really disavowed romantic comedies and had been fairly forceful that she didn’t like being associated with the genre and didn’t want to make more. She hadn’t done one since ‘The Proposal.’ There’s an audience nostalgia there. The studios are hedging their bets and that’s what you’re seeing in the bigger Hollywood-stye rom-coms: A star that’s already had success and a premise that isn’t purely rom-com. ‘Lost City’ is an action movie as much as it is a rom-com. ‘Marry Me’ is a JLo concert film as much as it is a rom-com.”
I wasn’t a fan of either. I’ve been revisiting movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s recently and I’m struck by how much better they hang together — how much better Hollywood was at making enjoyable genre fare, from rom-coms to action comedies to sports dramas.
Watching newer movies I keep thinking: Hollywood still knows how to assemble the parts, but it’s like everyone forgot how to make these movies and the end result is a weird facsimile that should work — but doesn’t. Everyone’s out of practice. The pacing’s all wrong. It’s revealing to watch “The Lost City” and its inspiration, 1984′s “Romancing the Stone,” back-to-back. There’s a jumbled sensibility to “The Lost City.” The characters don’t feel like believable people. The movie doesn’t feel like a story so much as a series of set pieces, none of them visually memorable.
Joel Kim Booster’s “Fire Island,” a gay riff on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” that premiered over the summer on Hulu, is among the stronger rom-coms of recent vintage. “Bros” followed a couple months later and I thought it was cute, but it arrived on the fumes of an ill-conceived marketing campaign that emphasized the film’s “importance” as the first studio rom-com with a big theatrical release to feature two guys falling in love.
“I thought the marketing was all wrong,” said Meslow. “The grandiosity is maybe what not what people were looking for from what really is a fun and pleasant romantic comedy. Audiences don’t need to be told something like this is important — they would rather be told that it’s fun.”
Television has picked up the slack, with some success. But unlike TV, a movie is a complete thought. A story told with economy and structure, rather than milking it for as many seasons as possible. Romantic comedy movies are an art form all their own, worthy of some new entries that feel like they have legs. A friend recently made a great point about why these newer entries seem to struggle so much: Collectively, we cannot decide what’s sexy or romantic anymore.
I’m always going to be a sucker for “His Girl Friday”-style banter. I’m talking about dialogue that’s actually funny, not just mimicking the rhythms of comedy.
The stakes have to feel worthwhile — do we even want these two to end up together? — and the story has to be interesting (nothing, and I mean nothing, is interesting about the story “Marry Me” tells).
And you need actors who can pull it off. Chemistry either exists or it doesn’t.
But also: The two leads have to sort of delight in each other — a skill that’s been in short supply lately.
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