By Tasnim Oyshi
Correspondent
With every new romantic comedy release, fans of the genre cheer, exclaiming, “Classic rom-coms are finally coming back!” This phenomenon has been going on since the end of the classic rom-com era in the 90s and early 2000s.
In their insatiable search for a romantic comedy that resembles the ones from earlier decades, rom-com fanatics cling to any new film in the genre and hope it marks the start of a romantic comedy comeback.
One of the latest movies to incite these familiar words from critics and audiences alike is “Anyone But You,” Will Gluck’s December 2023 adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” With a budget of $25 million, the movie became a box office success, raking in over $220 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Such success is rare for romantic comedies today, so “Anyone But You” was quick to elicit excitement within rom-com lovers who believed the genre might be experiencing a revival reminiscent of the 1990s, often referred to as the “Golden Age” of rom-coms.
What viewers are failing to realize in their anticipation of a new era of rom-coms, however, is that they’ve done this dance before. The film that aimed to bring back rom-coms before “Anyone But You” came out was “No Hard Feelings” and prior to that, it was “Marry Me.”
More recently, films like “The Idea of You” and “It Ends With Us” are being depicted as the new, refreshing rom-com that will take us back to a time when classic romantic comedies were a staple in Hollywood.
After so many films have claimed to be the ones to usher in a new age of feel-good rom-coms, you have to wonder when, or if, they will truly return. In reality, all of these films gain popularity following their release but do not make a significant enough impact to leave a lasting mark on the romantic comedy genre. Moviegoers watch these films once during their peak in theaters and rarely mention them again once the initial buzz wears off and the media attention shifts elsewhere.
What is most likely driving viewers to seek out new films that could fill the rom-com void in their list of liked movies on their streaming platforms is nostalgia. For many, it is hard to forget the legacy that the romantic comedies of the 1990s and early 2000s have left. Films of the time like “Clueless” and “10 Things I Hate About You” are revered to this day as cult classics. These movies followed a certain formula of relatable protagonists, classic romance tropes, and happy endings that viewers couldn’t get enough of. Very few newer romantic comedies seem to get this formula right, which is perhaps why they aren’t as memorable to audiences.
Probably the closest that the romantic comedy genre has come to a resurgence as big as the 90s was in 2018, during what Netflix dubbed its “Summer of Love.” In this period, Netflix came out with several hit romantic comedies that are still relatively well-known today.
Specific films to come out of that period were “The Kissing Booth” and “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” which were so adored by fans that they were both turned into trilogies. Despite the initial popularity, however, the sequels subsequently lost popularity and viewership.
The subtle rise and fall of this genre has persisted throughout the years. With more modern aspects to newer rom-coms and a failure to replicate the formula of the originals, new rom-coms simply can’t live up to rom-coms of the 90s. Truthfully, the classic romantic comedy may never replicate its achievements again.
Perhaps there is a chance of rom-coms making a comeback and staying for good if certain aspects of the new rom-com formula are tweaked. Maybe more reliance on older romantic tropes, the addition of diversity, or more relatability to the younger generation of rom-com viewers. As of right now, however, it is hard to declare that classic rom-coms are truly coming back.
