Romcoms

Long after Four Weddings, the gushy romcom has had its funeral. Should studios look to sharper indies to help renew its vows?

If the success of Crazy Rich Asians highlighted one thing, it was the lack of major films made by Asian talent in Hollywood. If its success exposed another thing, it was the decline of meet-cutes, awkward dates, wise-cracking bezzies, rain-soaked fall-outs and lip-biting reconciliations in movies: yes, the mainstream romcom is no longer standing before us, asking us to love it.

How it died is debatable. Perhaps viewers are too canny these days to buy into Meg Ryan ditching everything for Tom Hanks, or Andrew Lincoln wooing Keira Knightley with pictures of corpses. From this POV, romcoms are a relic of a period from the late ’80s to the early ’00s, before we got properly wise to certain sexist subtexts or ran screaming at the prospect of more Katherine Heigl/ Ashton Kutcher vehicles.

While too many duds helped snuff out a genre flame that once looked eternal, today’s young stars steered clear. Where Ryan and Julia Roberts were romcom regulars, Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart forged careers to the left of the romcom strip; likewise, no young male stars seem synonymous with romcoms these days, either. Ryan Reynolds clearly realised that cracking anal jokes in spandex was more fun than The Proposal. Similarly, the rise of the rude in female-centric movies – Bridesmaids to Girls Trip – seems to have filled a space once occupied by the cheesier likes of You’ve Got Mail.

If stars don’t ‘open’ films nowadays anyway, that might explain the tendency to dress romantic themes in franchise drag. With The Hunger Games and Twilight, studios weaponised befuddled love by framing it in films that both sell well overseas (unlike culturally specific, dialogue-heavy romcoms) and provide seed-beds for sequels.

Perhaps it was the rise of franchises and the decline of mid-budget films that killed the romcom, or at least steered it to streaming. If Hollywood doesn’t want Netflix getting all the love, more faith in the mid-budget arena could reopen a space for wilier big-screen romcoms to thrive, following paths laid by Crazy Rich Asians, The Big Sick and Love, Simon. After all, smart studios can learn from indies.

With Nora Ephron gone and Richard Curtis no longer on romcom duty, the genre needs new auteurs to light its way. If a witty, woke writer could serve up a sharper class of evolved romcom, maybe audiences will say “I do” once again. KH