Summer of rom-coms is here
A death of sorts was necessary for the rom-com to rise again with a new set of voices
Summer is always full of action and superhero pics, but this year a once dormant yet utterly adored genre is coming back in a big way: the romantic comedy. After a 2017 without any from a major studio, this summer is proving to be a re-birth for this lost Hollywood staple with five notable releases, including Crazy
Rich Asians and a Mamma Mia! sequel.
The reasons for the genre’s decline are many. A post-recession focus on international audiences, franchises and superheroes have helped to push rom-coms off the priority list for studios. Also, after a long and fruitful run in the late ’80s through the 2000s, enthusiasm started to wane. They had become stale. There were a few outliers, of course, like Amy Schumer’s
Trainwreck, but the big studio rom-coms became derivative, lazy and dull.
“They didn’t reflect the way that society was changing. They were all about white, straight couples. They fell back on the conventions that define the genre,” said Erin Carlson, author of the book I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy and an upcoming book about the films of Meryl Streep. “People just got tired of them.”
A death, of sorts, was necessary for the genre to rise again with a new set of voices. It didn’t hurt that The Big Sick made a splash at the box office and went on to get a screenwriting Oscar nomination — the kind of prestigious recognition rarely afforded to classic rom-coms that don’t have a Silver Linings Playbook edge.
“[The Big Sick] showed that people still want a good rom-com at the multiplex, but they want one that pushes the genre forward in new, interesting ways that reflect real life today, not tired tropes of yesterday,” Carlson said.
And indeed, the romcoms of 2018 are continuing that forward movement. Earlier in the year there was Paramount’s Book Club and its focus on older women, 20th Century Fox’s Love, Simon’s gay, teen protagonist, and the bilingual Overboard, which has become the highest-grossing film for Pantelion Films.
Set It Up, a Netflix release out now, is perhaps the most throw-back of all the upcoming films. It is about people with actual jobs that consume their lives instead of playing a glamorous backdrop to whatever romantic exploits the movie dictates. Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell star as assistants who decide to set up their miserable and difficult bosses, played by Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs.
The script got the attention of Hollywood with a spot on the coveted Black List in 2015, a survey of the industry’s best unproduced screenplays. It was picked up by MGM and even had Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke to star, but it started to fall apart when the studio wavered and Clarke had to go back to television. The team, including Powell, was undeterred.
That all changed in a meeting with Netflix, when executive Matt Brodlie agreed to make it. Netflix has also released a few other romantic comedies this year including Ibiza, When We First Met and The Kissing Booth.
And, likewise, Amazon was the shop that took a gamble acquiring The Big Sick.
It’s not just streaming platforms re-embracing the genre — the big studios are too. Universal has Mamma Mia! Here We Go
Again coming July 20, with many of the original cast as well as Cher and Andy Garcia. And Warner Bros. is releasing the adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s popular novel Crazy Rich Asians on August 15.
The independent realm, which has been keeping rom-coms alive for some time, also has a few boundary-pushing releases on the schedule. The Sundance charmer Juliet, Naked, based on the Nick Hornby novel and starring Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd and Ethan Hawke, comes out August 17, followed by Destination Wedding, which boasts a ’90s dream cast in Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves who star as single wedding guests.
If 2018 is the start of a new era of the romantic comedy, Carlson thinks that one day we may trace it back to The Big Sick. She compares it to how Moonstruck, which won three Oscars in 1988, helped get the genre out of the cynical Annie Hall phase and pave the way for When Harry Met Sally and other classics it spawned.
“People have written the romantic comedy’s obituary over and over and over again,” Carlson said. “But the genre will always survive.”
“[Rom-coms] didn’t reflect the way that society was changing. They were all about white, straight couples.” ERIN CARLSON | Author