How does the original What Women Want hold up two decades later?
For the second-highest-grossing romantic comedy ever made, What Women Want hasn’t had much cultural…
When Romance Met Comedy
With When Romance Met Comedy, Caroline Siede examines the history of the rom-com through the years, one happily ever after (or not) at a time.
Bride & Prejudice weaves an impressive cultural critique into a Bollywood-inspired Jane Austen update
There’s good news and bad news for American rom-com fans sick of rewatching the same Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts…
27 Dresses doesn’t deserve your hate and neither does Katherine Heigl
The first time I saw 27 Dresses, I felt such a strong emotional connection to its put-upon, self-sacrificing…
Without hope or agenda: A defense of Love Actually
It takes a lot to become a new Christmas classic, so it’s doubly impressive that Love Actually managed to enter that…
Why are Hallmark Christmas movies so addictive?
My fondest memory from this Thanksgiving was the night my mom and I tried to piece together the plot of a Hallmark…
Enchanted, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Disney princess
I’m as guilty as anyone of occasionally framing issues of onscreen representation in terms of how they might impact…
The Devil Wears Prada pulls off the perfect romantic comedy look, even though it really isn't one
One of the things you quickly learn when you write an ongoing column about romantic comedies is…
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a sexy vacation romp that explores the line between fantasy and reality
Romantic comedies are about wish fulfillment, so that makes them a fascinating case study in which wishes Hollywood is…
Pretty In Pink is a far superior riff on the Sixteen Candles formula
John Hughes built a career on exploring teenage archetypes. The Breakfast Club famously featured a brain, an athlete, a…
Romantic comedies (briefly) came out of the closet with In & Out
In a roundabout way, we have Tom Hanks to thank for one of our very few mainstream gay rom-coms. While accepting the…
How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days set the stage for the rom-com’s downfall
The history of the modern-day romantic comedy goes something like this: Rom-coms were good, then they got really bad,…
Jane Austen provided the romantic comedy some Sense And Sensibility
With the rom-com officially back in vogue thanks to summer hits like Crazy Rich Asians and Netflix’s Set It Up, it’s…
Pair Crazy Rich Asians with this Hong Kong rom-com classic
Picking a classic rom-com to complement the release of this summer’s buzzy Crazy Rich Asians is a bit of a challenge. Cr…
Maid In Manhattan let Jennifer Lopez’s rom-com talents sparkle
It is a truth too infrequently acknowledged that Jennifer Lopez is one of our most talented living performers. Lopez’s…
You can dance, you can jive, you can love Mamma Mia! without feeling embarrassed
One of the best moments in the goofy, feel-good movie musical Mamma Mia! finds a trio of old friends donning the gaudy…
25 years ago, Sleepless In Seattle found the romantic hiding in the cynic
This month marks the 25th anniversary of Sleepless In Seattle, which reunited Meg Ryan with her Joe Versus The Volcano c…
Breakfast At Tiffany’s is so much more than a fashionable proto-Sex And The City
In a 2017 essay, Erin Horáková describes a phenomenon she calls “Kirk drift.” She argues that our commonly accepted pop…
Will Smith’s lone rom-com muddled its message about pickup artists and romance
For a movie that features a professional pickup artist as its romantic leading man, Hitch has a surprisingly insightful…
My Best Friend’s Wedding rewrote the rom-com happy ending
Rom-coms have happy endings. That fact is such a given that it’s often preemptively held against the genre. Why see a…