America Needs a Rom-Com Bailout
The romantic comedy was once a tentpole of Hollywood. The genre defined A-list careers, won awards for studios, and made piles of cash. Then one day, rom-coms seemed a thing of the past, and their relative absence from theaters has been an open mystery for the better part of a decade. What killed the romantic comedy? Did studios or audiences abandon the genre first? Did streaming television do it in—or just transform it into something new?
But while the rom-com’s demise can be forever debated, its future remains unwritten. What can be done to bring the genre back?
The week of Valentine’s Day brought a rare crop of two rom-coms: the glitzy throwback Marry Me and the indie-inflected I Want You Back. Both movies offer something to recommend them (especially the always-great Jennifer Lopez’s magnetic performance), but they also served to remind audiences of what they’d lost.
On an episode of The Atlantic’s culture podcast The Review, David Sims, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert discuss the state of the rom-com and what can be done to resurrect it. (Perhaps casting male leads more for chemistry than comedy?) Listen to their conversation here:
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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
David Sims: We’ve spent the week ruminating on romantic comedies because, in honor of Valentine’s Day, there are a couple of new movies out about grown adults falling in love!
There’s with Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, which is in theaters and on Peacock. And then there’s with Charlie Day and Jenny Slate, which is on Amazon. Are you guys, like me, a fan of the romantic comedy and maybe a little
