“You don't want to be in love…
You want to be in love in a movie.”
The romantic comedy is cinema’s version of comfort food.
“You have your witty, British ones.
Your workplace empowerment movies.
And my personal favorite, the late middle-age fantasies,
where all the women wear white cashmere turtlenecks
and have fantastic kitchens.”
This ever charming, always idealistic movie genre
all but guarantees a happy ending,
after the good fun of a string of wacky misadventures along the way.
Let’s break down the key ingredients of the rom-com formula:
The two love interests probably start out at odds.
They may come from different worlds, have competing goals,
or simply get off on the wrong foot.
“I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet,
that I was unforgivably rude and wearing a reindeer jumper.”
But as the rom-com wisdom goes,
there’s a very thin line between love and hate,
and the story frames all this friction as kindling for sparks to fly.
“You're angry, aren't you?”
“Yes, I am!”
“Mm-hmm.
The love impulse in man frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.”
The plot tends to involve a big misunderstanding
or even outright deception,
as characters pretend to be someone they’re not.
“Well, what's your name?
Maybe I've heard of you.”
“Zip.”
Common plot points include a serendipitous meet-cute,
a grand gesture, a love triangle,
and a scene of the lovers kissing in the rain.
“Is it still raining?
I hadn't noticed”
The story is often set in New York,
where the single protagonist lives in a suspiciously large apartment,
and the characters tend to have whimsical jobs at magazines,
in the fashion industry, or managing independent bookstores.
There’s a spunky and adorable heroine,
often played by an actress who’s known for her extensive rom-com portfolio.
“Oh!”
[Laughs]
But lest she comes across as too perfect,
she has charmingly relatable flaws like being improbably clumsy.
A cast of zany side characters
usually includes a best friend with seemingly endless time
to provide comic relief and discuss the main character’s problems.
“I don't want to see you live a life of regret
and think, ‘Maybe if I tried harder…’”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Just talk to Marcus.”
Rom-com leads often start out with a red herring love interest
who seems very appealing but turns out to be all wrong.
"Nothing.
I didn't feel a thing."
Meanwhile, as the protagonist spends time
with someone they aren’t actively trying to impress,
they can be their unfiltered self
and get to know the other person in a real way.
“And the great thing is, I don't have to lie
because I'm not always thinking about how to get her into bed.
I can just be myself.”
This long-developing chemistry leads to a moment of epiphany,
where the character suddenly realizes
the feelings that have been crystal-clear to the viewer all along.
“Oh, my God!
l love Josh.”
And the scene where the couple
declares their love and commits to each other
tends to be saved for the very end.
“I wanted it to be you.
I wanted it to be you so badly.”
Since the movie stops here,
we don’t actually get to see what happily ever after looks like.
Today we’re in the midst of a Rom-Com Renaissance,
but there’s a lot of debate about what happened to the romantic comedy
since its 90s Golden Age,
and whether a pure version of this story type is still viable.
Here’s our take on the rom-com:
where it comes from, what it says about love,
and what its future looks like.
“Romantic love is not an ending.
It's just a part of your story, a part of who you are.”
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Part of what gives the rom-com such a layered reputation
is that it’s inherently contradictory.
The genre is loaded with conventions
that are both empowering and limiting to women,
the demographic it’s most often marketed to and beloved by.
"Then I turn on the news and I'm like.
Then I turn on Sweet Home Alabama and I'm like.”
It tends to center on a spirited, intelligent female protagonist,
but it also suggests that finding love is the most important thing in her life.
“I have two choices:
to give up and accept permanent state of spinsterhood
and eventual eating by Alsatians,
or not.”
It’s all about romance,
but these farcical premises can veer into behavior
that would be considered extremely creepy
or inappropriate in real life.
"All I can tell you is that when you're my age,
the guys will be lined up around the block for you.
Actually, I shouldn't say that because I'm your teacher."
Just look at some of the most famous rom-com set-ups:
dating someone for a bet, stalking for love,
or becoming obsessed with and aggressively pursuing a person
you’ve never even met.
“What if this man is my destiny and I never meet him?"
Another common critique is that rom-coms are unrealistic,
hooking us on the potentially damaging myth
of a perfect soulmate who’s the answer to all our problems.
As Mindy Kaling puts it,
“I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi,
in which the world created therein
has different rules than my regular human world.”
“People waking up in bed with full hair and makeup.
It's so unrealistic.”
But in spite of their belief in destiny and the implausibly big apartments,
rom-coms can also be extremely relatable,
tapping into the longings and hang-ups we all experience.
“Cause the more people you let into your life, um,
the more they can just walk right out.”
Mark Harris writes,
“The sad/scary undertow of every romantic comedy is,
‘What if I’m not in a romantic comedy but a melodrama?
What if it never works out for me?’”
“Why am I always at dull weddings
and never actually getting married?”
This deep-seated fear,
which everyone has felt at some point in their life,
gives these movies a visceral sense of high stakes.
“I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a boy,
asking him to love her.”
Rom-coms almost always end in finding love,
but the real “meat” of the movie is so much more than that.
Because the couple usually doesn’t get together until the final scene,
this story implies that what really matters is the journey there:
the protagonist’s ups and downs at work,
their private doubts and struggles, their nutty escapades with friends.
"That's right, and then Park Lane."
“No, no!
Straight down to the Cromwell route then left."
“No!”
[Indistinct yelling]
"Stop right there!
James Bond never has to put up with any of this shit.”
Often, the biggest obstacles
the rom-com main character needs to overcome are internal.
“You are afraid not to be an assistant anymore.
I think you'd rather run around, getting Kirstin coffee,
than sit down, write something and find out you suck.”
The men in the women’s life can be read as symbolic stand-ins
for the versions of herself she could become.
Seeing beyond the “red herring” guy
represents outgrowing immature or superficial misconceptions
about what she expects from life.
“I’m just looking for something.
I don’t know what it is really, but it’s not here.”
And the true goal of the story is personal development,
which is a necessary precursor
for anyone to be able to dedicate themselves to another person.
“I complete myself.”
The deeply ingrained tropes and incongruities of the rom-com
actually date back much further than you might think.
In the Elizabethan era,
William Shakespeare made early contributions to the genre
with plays featuring complicated love triangles,
comic misunderstandings,
and that classic rom-com trope of deception.
In As You Like It and Twelfth Night,
a female protagonist disguises herself as a man,
while pining for a male who’s fooled by her costume,
and accidentally making another woman
fall in love with her alter-ego.
“By the roses of the spring,
by maidhood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so.”
The Bard set the bar for the importance of sophisticated dialogue
in romantic comedies.
“There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her.
They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”
A few hundred years later in the Regency period,
Jane Austen revolutionized the form with her novels
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma,
stories which also mined the tension and turmoil of central misunderstandings.
“Then, you are not married?”
We can see a precursor to the modern red herring love interest
in the way that many of Austen’s characters
initially fall for a dashing “bad boy”
who turns out to be a rake.
“He has broken no vow.”
“He has.
He has broken faith with all of us.
He made us all believe he loved you!”
Most importantly, Austen’s work exemplifies the idea
of the marriage plot.
All of her six published novels end with weddings.
On the one hand,
the author turns a critical eye on the institution of marriage,
emphasizing the social reality that most women in that time
had to marry shrewdly to secure a livelihood.
“With father's estate entailed away from the female line,
we have little but our charms to recommend us.
One of us at least will have to marry very well.”
At the same time,
she empowers her female protagonists by giving them the agency
to buck that economic and social pressure
and choose their partners based on true love.
“He is truly the best man I have ever known.”
“I could not have parted with you to anyone less worthy, Lizzy.”
As Sophie Gilbert writes in The Atlantic,
“No one did more to challenge the conventions and strictures
of marriage for women in the 19th century,
while simultaneously enshrining it as the ultimate happy ending
for her worthy, intelligent, and independent characters.”
“Three daughters married!
Oh, Mr Bennet, God has been very good to us!”
Modern rom-coms still tend to adhere
to some version of the Marriage Plot structure.
Even when there’s not an actual wedding, the movie usually ends
with the implication of monogamous commitment,
“How about some coffee, or, you know, drinks or dinner,
or a movie, for as long as we both shall live.”
and this climactic moment of romantic happiness
is framed as the emotional payoff the whole story has led up to.
To this day, Shakespeare and Austen’s works
are still being channeled into beloved modern rom-coms,
from the Shakespeare-inspired 10 Things I Hate About You
and She’s the Man
to Austen adaptations Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless.
Jumping ahead to early film,
the 30s and early 40s ushered in the heyday of screwball comedy,
which again proved that witty dialogue
was the key to a satisfying rom-com.
“Anyway, David, when they find out who we are, why, they'll let us out.”
“When they find out who you are, they'll pad the cell.”
These films, usually centered on a strong, independent female protagonist,
were remarkable for their portraits of equality between the genders.
“You're a newspaperman.”
“That's why I'm quitting.
I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.”
“You mean be a traitor.”
“A traitor?
A traitor to what?”
“A traitor to journalism!
You’re a journalist, Hildy!”
A subgenre of the screwball is what Stanley Cavell calls
“comedies of remarriage,”
stories about separated spouses who ultimately get back together.
“You've got an old-fashioned idea
divorce is something that lasts forever,
‘til death do us part.”
While most of the screwball comedy
involves the partners verbally sparring or manipulating each other,
ironically, all this fighting
emphasizes how these clever, vigorous characters
have truly met their match.
“Oh, Walter, you're wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way.”
Ultimately, the screwball’s
“can’t live with them, can’t live without them” take on love
would inform many later romantic comedies.
“l hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind.
But mostly, I hate the way l don't hate you, not even close,
not even a little bit, not even at all.”
In the 50s, movies like The Seven Year Itch,
How To Marry a Millionaire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
and Some Like it Hot,
all starring Marilyn Monroe,
focused on women wanting to lock down a rich man,
emphasizing the fundamentally economic nature of marriage.
“But I prefer a man who lives and gives expensive jewels.”
They were also more transparently about sex,
even if it was only alluded to,
"Don't stop, don't stop, don't ever stop.”
due to the Hays Code:
a set of guidelines that, starting in the 30s,
required movies to avoid nudity, profanity,
and even prolonged kissing.
1959’s Some Like it Hot
follows two male characters disguised in drag,
being romantically pursued by men,
“You must be quite a girl.”
“Wanna bet?”
and trying to seduce Monroe’s sexy Sugar.
This box office hit helped take down the Hays Code
(which officially ended in 1967)
by pushing boundaries in exploring gender and sexuality.
“I’m a man.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
The late 50s and early 60s gave us campy sex comedies
starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson,
which focus on a battle of the sexes.
“And if I weren’t a lady I’d tell you what profession you are in.”
Despite their name, the sexual content in these movies
was comprised mostly of innuendo.
“I don't know what's bothering you,
but don't take your bedroom problems out on me.”
“I have no bedroom problems.
There's nothing in my bedroom that bothers me.”
“Oh.
That's too bad.”
The casting of Doris Day, known for her wholesome image,
underlines how these movies eased audience
into a more sex-conscious age.
As A.O. Scott writes,
“Her presence simultaneously upholds the pretense of virtuous normality
and utterly transgresses it.”
Part of why so many early rom-coms
end in a wedding or focus on a previously married couple
is that this takes away the issue of premarital sex.
But in 60s rom-coms,
some filmmakers stopped shying away from this reality.
"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.”
1960’s The Apartment explored the darker territory of adultery
and a boss exploiting his younger female employee for sex.
"Some people take, some people get took,
and they know they're getting took.
and there's nothing they can do about it.”
1967’s The Graduate is essentially
a bleak mash-up of major rom-com plot points
that expresses ambivalence towards settling down at all.
[Singing] “Within the sound of silence.”
70s films continued to explore disillusionment with forever-love,
“Of course I'm mad, because you love me.
I know that."
"Alvy, I can't say that that's true at this point in my life.
I really just can’t say that that’s true.”
but found consolation in the message
that temporary loves can still improve and add dimension to our lives.
“I love you!”
“That is wonderful.
Go and love some more”.
In the 80s came the birth of the high-school rom-com,
making the genre more accessible to young people.
“Make a wish.”
“It already came true.”
In the same period, viewers got to see
more female leads in professional settings,
navigating their careers and love lives,
“I have a head for business and a bod for sin.”
a clear precursor to modern workplace rom-coms.
The decade ended
with what is widely considered the best romantic comedy of all time:
When Harry Met Sally.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
Part of the reason this movie retains such a special status
is its universality and simplicity.
It’s working title was actually Boy Meets Girl.
Instead of hooking us with a wacky premise,
the film seeks to answer a fundamental question:
can a straight man and woman ever be just friends?
“Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”
And the movie’s thesis—that no, they cannot—is foundational
to countless rom-coms
where the protagonist’s friend turns out to be their true love.
“So the best friend you've always had a ton of chemistry with
is the guy for you?
Oh, my God, who could've seen that coming except
every single person ever of all time.”
On the other end of the spectrum from When Harry Met Sally’s model
of the down-to-earth, no frills investigation of human relationships
is a second major type of rom-com,
which revolves around a high-concept, sometimes absurdly ridiculous premise.
This category is exemplified by 1987’s Overboard,
a heartwarming story about a woman with amnesia
falling for the guy who’s kidnapped her,
and 1990’s Pretty Woman,
the fairytale of a cold-hearted businessman being transformed
by a week with a prostitute.
"So what happened after he climbs up the tower and rescues her?"
"She rescues him right back.”
Which brings us to the so-called Golden Age of the rom-com
in the 90s and early 2000s.
During this era, genre masterminds
like Richard Curtis, Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron
became household names.
A cadre of stars like Meg Ryan,
Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock and Kate Hudson
became expected fixtures of the genre.
This period offered sophisticated, well-executed takes on the form,
that occasionally played with or subverted
certain audience expectations.
Significantly, the genre also took positive strides forward
in becoming more diverse:
Latina star Jennifer Lopez made her mark on the genre,
and after the success of 1988’s Coming to America
came more black rom-coms
like Boomerang, The Best Man, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
“You're good?”
“Yes.”
“You real good?”
“I'm real good.
Whoo!”
“Don't scare the white people.”
Through all these decades, the romantic comedy was often
commercially and critically successful.
“And the winner is Annie Hall”.
But somewhere around the late 2000s, something changed.
Ticket sales for this kind of movie declined,
and suddenly, there was a lot of talk about the death of the rom-com.
As Mindy Kaling wrote in 2011,
“The genre has been so degraded in the past 20 years
that saying you like romantic comedies
is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I'm like a ghost now.
Yeah, the ghost of girlfriends past, in fact.”
So, what happened?
One explanation for the rom-com’s stagnation in the late aughts
is that mid-budget studio movies were becoming a thing of the past.
But another concern was that,
even among those rom-coms that did get made and were profitable,
there was a clear decline in quality.
Old, gendered tropes were becoming stale and outdated.
“Rule #3, men are very visual.
We have to change your look.”
Evidently, the genre needed a makeover on both fronts,
not just to remain in existence, but to stay relevant.
How, then, did the form adapt to a modern world?
“How many girls have you slept with?"
"I’ve slept with three women."
"Me too.
I have slept with three women too."
First, rom-coms might come in different packaging.
2012’s Silver Linings Playbook
incorporated darker themes of mental illness and grief
into the rom-com formula,
“I'm just the crazy slut with a dead husband!”
[Laughs]
and was rewarded with box office success and eight Academy Award nominations.
Movies like Wedding Crashers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Knocked Up
found a new audience in gearing themselves towards men.
“You know they say don't drink and drive?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don't drink and bone!”
“Wow.”
More recently, Deadpool can be seen as a superhero twist
on a male-oriented romantic comedy.
"Some of the best love stories start with a murder.
And that's exactly what this is: a love story."
Modern rom-com-esque movies also present new takeaways:
like that a woman might prefer to be single
or that our platonic best friends are the great loves of our lives.
“I'm not going to get to live 5 minutes away from you,
and it makes me so sad.”
Crucially, this notoriously straight, white genre
has found modern relevance
by putting people of color and queer characters front and center.
And finally, romantic comedies
have mostly moved from the movie theater to TV and streaming services,
a format that allows more time
for character development and exploring nuance in relationships.
Netflix essentially reignited the genre with its 2018 “Summer of Love,”
during which it released 11 rom-coms
including the popular Set It Up and To All the Boys I Loved Before.
“I need you to know that I like you, Peter Kavinsky.
And not in a fake way”.
On top of all this,
in recent years there’s been a growing self-awareness
and deconstruction of stereotypical rom-com tropes.
“Good looking people who hate each other
but secretly have the hots for each other?
They are always getting stuck
in snowy cabins and bank vaults and the trunk of a car.”
Most interestingly, some stories have investigated what happens
to people who have internalized the lessons of romantic comedies.
The Mindy Project’s rom-com addicted protagonist Mindy Lahiri
can’t help applying their conventions to her own love life.
“Met in an elevator.
My hair came undone.
Are you kidding me?
I'm basically Sandra Bullock.
And then it happened.”
“Did the elevator just stop?”
In a classic rom-com device,
her constant bickering with her fellow OBGYN Danny
sets up the revelation that they have feelings for each other.
But because this is a TV show,
that storyline only takes us to the end of the first season,
and we go on to see the conflict that ensues
when this unlikely couple actually tries to build a life together.
“Stay-at-home mom.
Can you remind me what that job entails?”
“Cooking, cleaning, keeping the piano in tune, stocking the pantry,
raising our son, and maintaining a positive attitude that sets the tone
for the rest of the household.”
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was also inspired by applying rom-com lessons to reality,
as a way of elucidating how twisted they really are.
“People in romantic comedies generally are psychotic.
Okay, a woman moving across the country to be with a guy,
a woman bursting into song.
And then we said, okay, if this took place in reality,
she would be dreadfully unhappy.”
The protagonist Rebecca’s romance-obsessed worldview
is framed as a symptom of her mental illness
that leads her to act in totally unhinged ways,
like pinning all her hopes of happiness
on a pretty average guy she dated years before
after a random “meet-cute” run-in with him.
“I was in New York, I ran into Josh
he made me feel warm inside like glitter was exploding inside me,
then I moved here.”
Natalie of 2019’s Isn’t It Romantic
is yet a third heroine who grew up watching rom-coms.
But unlike Mindy and Rebecca,
she has been rudely disabused of their idealistic notions.
“Forget about love.
In real life, girls like us don't get that.”
Natalie must confront her cynical hang-ups
when she hits her head
and wakes up in a world of rom-com tropes.
“New York doesn't smell like shit anymore.
Everything smells like lavender.”
And she’s actually empowered
by learning to view her life through rom-com glasses.
Up to this point, she’s been missing
the rom-com potential that was already there in her life because she believed
she wasn’t good enough to deserve the fairy tale.
“It looks like you have the dream job, the guy that really likes you,
the really cool best friend—me.
It's like you are in one of those love stories that you hate so much.”
Ultimately, though, both Isn’t It Romantic and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
end in an affirmation of self-love.
“My god, this whole time,
I thought I had to get somebody else to fall in love with me,
but I…
I had to love me.”
Rebecca’s healing comes from letting go
of a socially-prescribed, restrictive narrative
“The moment you’re craving isn’t anchored in real emotion.
It’s a script dictated to you by our society’s patriarchal love narrative.”
and instead creating something entirely original.
“When writing songs, the most important thing is to learn to tell your story,
not a story you get from the outside world,
but your own story.”
This is the same lesson the rom-com genre itself had to learn.
It had to chart a new course to evolve with the times.
“I know you think that she was the one, but I don’t.”
The rom-com isn’t cinema’s definitive take on love.
It co-exists with romantic tragedies,
melodramas, and dissections of relationship breakdowns.
“I can’t believe I have to know you forever!”
And on some level,
we might view these genres as just falling at different points
in a relationship timeline.
Rom-coms capture how the early stages of love
are often experienced through rose-colored glasses.
“There's only one person that makes me feel like I can fly.
That's you.”
So when the arguments, disappointments, and compromises
create bumpier roads ahead,
the couple can sustain themselves
by remembering how this picture-perfect time felt,
when everything was still a beautiful beginning.
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody,
you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Hi everyone!
I’m Susannah.
I’m Debra.
And we’re the creators of The Take.
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