<em>Isn’t It Romantic</em> Fails as Both Rom-Com and Satire

The romantic comedy has been in a state of moderate crisis for the better part of a decade. After spending the early aughts making easy money with pairings of largely interchangeable stars—Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Katherine Heigl, Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler, Jennifer Lopez … —rom-coms saw their box-office wave dry up abruptly around 2012. As the producer Lynda Obst, a doyenne of the genre, told Vulture that year, “It is the hardest time of my 30 years in the business.”

Some rom-coms began experimenting with out-there premises (the “She’s a woman, he’s), while others presented themselves as another genre altogether (, for instance, or ). Lately, many of the more successful entrants in the genre have been films that de-emphasized Hollywood movie stars and featured racially diverse casts (, , ). But I think it’s safe to say that we are at a moment when no one has a particularly good sense of precisely where the rom-com is headed.