The late 1990s to the early 2000s were the golden age of rom-coms – there’s no disputing that. What other era of romantic comedies could produce the likes of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “10 Things I Hate About You” (a personal favorite!) or even “Love Actually.” But this golden age ended long ago, with many rom-coms since then either flopping at the box office or going unnoticed on streaming services. As studios found greater profit in superhero (Marvel I’m looking at you) and blockbuster action movies, they moved away from making studio rom-coms, leaving us with made-for-streaming rom-coms, many of which just felt wrong.
But recently, we’ve seen a return to the classic tropes that captivated us and the box office nearly 20 years ago. This may be in large part because of the increased demand for feel-good movies in the wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic that shut down movie production for nearly two years, and completely changed the content that we as viewers demanded from film studios. With audience fatigue from the inundation of superhero and action movies, accompanied with the recent success of different rom-coms at the box office, could we be experiencing the revival of the rom-com right before our very eyes?
The familiar comfort of a rom-com and predictable storyline often seen was like a warm embrace after so much discomfort and fear of the unknown. When everyone was losing their minds and everything was falling apart, rom-coms were a reliable comfort, allowing you to retreat into a feel-good story without the complexities of everyday life – a fairytale where the boy gets the girl, but one set in the real world just to the point where it feels attainable. The premise of “that could be me” keeps us engrossed and coming back to these stories of love that we so often look to when our own love life is lacking.
Aside from the comfort factor, this resurgence of rom-coms is driven in large part by the waves of nostalgia these movies bring along with them. Watching a teen rom-com, such as ‘10 Things I Hate About You” or “Clueless,” takes us back to the days when we were teenagers (albeit a bit less fashion forward than Cher) and in search of that young love our female protagonists always seem to find. They feed into our eagerness to be transported back to our childhoods, where many of us were blindly optimistic, happy, and hopefully carefree. These are luxuries many of us don’t possess any more, thus allowing the story to take us back to “the good ol’ days.”
While nostalgia is so incredibly powerful, so is the addition of inclusive and more well-rounded storylines in modern-day rom-coms, a facet which is drawing a larger audience than ever before. Adding in storylines and characters from various ethnic and religious backgrounds allows more and more people to see themselves in a movie and resonate with it on a deeper level. This in turn drives the production of more and more films to accommodate for the vast amount of romance and human experience that can be told through the magic of film.
“Anyone But You” might be the most recent rom-com to smash expectations at the box office, but the success of recent rom-coms like “No Hard Feelings” and “Ticket to Paradise” may signal change on the horizon. Will studios invest again in rom-coms? Will we again witness a golden age of romantic comedies on the big screen? Nothing will compare to the peak rom-com era of the late 90s to the early 2000s, but we very well could be experiencing their comeback in a big way. Only time will tell!