Film romantic comedies

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    • they/them
    • Seen Oct 15, 2024
    This genre, where every silly idea can become a whole movie apparently. I've watched a looot of them and wondering if there are any more properly good ones (or new ones) that I missed so shoot! Your fav romcoms pls


    The Holiday is one of my favs. Nothing spectacular, just very very cozy.
     
    Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally... are the foundation of the 'modern' romcom and are both that rare thing: very, very cozy to watch and also quietly spectacular and hilarious and romantic.

    If you're in the mood for something 'classic' (i.e. black and white), you can't go wrong with Holiday and The Philadelphia Story, both starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, or The Shop Around The Corner, which was the basis for You've Got Mail in the late '90s.

    More recent options include Obvious Child, a romcom with an abortion subplot, Gloria, a Chilean film about a divorcee looking to get back on the dating market, and Silver Linings Playbook, which got too many Oscar nominations (and subsequent pushback and dismissal from certain quarters) but is still really good.

    OH, and how could I forget the classic that is Bridget Jones' Diary. Just make sure you avoid the sequels like the plague!
     
    Wedding Crashers is one of the best romantic comedies of all time. Just saying.

    If you want something older, just look at most of Audrey Hepburn's most famous roles; [/i]Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday[/i] etc. Even something like Charade whilst not a rom-com per say, has a romantic element.

    Recently I've found a few decent ones on Netflix - one I really liked was Night Owls, and The Escorts with the daughter from HIMYM was decent if quite formulaic. The To Do List with Aubrey Plaza is really funny, and She's Funny That Way is more like a classic screwball comedy but also quite funny.

    One thing recently is that studio rom-coms aren't a thing any more, it's exclusively indie film-makers doing them. Of recent ones that were quite decent I can think of How to be Single and Sleeping With Other People although both kinda drag towards the last 30 minutes.

    In fact my favourite recent romantic comedies, if you can class them as that, would probably be two t.v. shows: Master of None and New Girl. Completely different styles of humour but both have a lot of romantic plots so I'd count them.
     
    OH, and how could I forget the classic that is Bridget Jones' Diary. Just make sure you avoid the sequels like the plague!

    Baby is much, much better than the barbaric second movie! Obviously not on par with Diary, but still a good standalone movie and something I would recommend to anyone who hasn't seen the movies, assuming they also watch Diary.

    As for my other favourites, I am always partial to a watch of Muriel's Wedding: rom-com maybe isn't the first term that would come to mind when describing Toni Collette's big break, considering it's a pretty fucking bleak movie at times, but at its core it teaches a lot about love, self-respect and moving on from failures, your own and those of others.

    I think When Harry Met Sally speaks for itself. Oh Meg Ryan, the pain we felt when we lost thee to thyself years ago. A lot of the comedies from 1989 to 1999 speak for themselves, really. I still have no fondness whatsoever for Julia Roberts, but Notting Hill convinced me that perhaps she wasn't entirely evil.

    13 Going on 30 is on local tv probably 35 times a year, and I am yet to see how it doesn't deserve a rewatch every time. It's sweet! It doesn't try to be what it isn't! Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo are the couple I am surprisingly rooting for, considering how off-putting Ruffalo is elsewhere! Thriller saved the world!
    My Big Fat Greek Wedding falls into the same category. It's cute, it's not anything more than it isn't, and the bibopsy scene gets me every single time. John Corbett, one of those people who you don't understand how they got famous for a period of time but you like it anyway, is a sweetheart. Basically the same guy that he was in Sex and the City at the time, but without becoming a godawful jerk at the end of the run.

    Basically any Katharine Hepburn movie in the genre - Miss Versatility (hah! still consider her my favourite actress but hah!) knows exactly what she's doing, and when her co-stars understand what she's doing, magic happens. Ms Hepburn and Cary Grant were incomparable in the genre for quite some time. If we're going slightly older, then Greta Garbo in Ninotchka has always been a delight. 'Garbo Laughs!' So did I!

    Love Actually was really fun! Hugh Grant as a prime minister? Alright! That's a thing! Let's continue. I only saw it like three months ago, believe it or not, but it etched its way into my heart. Would like to watch it again.

    So many good rom-coms out there.
     
    Just thought of one that's even more left-field than some of my initial mentions:

    Ocho apellidos catalanes (Spanish Affair 2 on Netflix). It's in Spanish but if you know a little about the Basques and the Catalans and their relationship to Madrid its really funny but even without that a lot of the jokes aren't political, and some of the stuff that is is just crazy enough that you don't really need context. As its Netflix name suggests, it is a sequel and I've been told that the first one, Ocho apellidos vascos is also really good.
     
    Oh wow I have to bookmark this thread, it's a gold mine <3

    I remembered another one of my absolute favs, Made of Honor, in which two best friends dance around each other forever, until one is about to get married and that makes the other realize that damn, I do want her! Very cute.
     
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