The rom-coms of today don’t just disappoint — they feel out of touch.
Looking back at the so-called “golden age of romantic comedies,” roughly spanning the late 1980s to the early 2000s, it’s hard not to notice how much was taken for granted. In just over a decade, audiences were treated to an iconic run of films. When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and Legally Blonde (2001) were all released within a 12-year span and each became a bona fide classic. It wasn’t just the Meg Ryan effect; these films defined the genre. Now, Hollywood has spent the last decade trying, and largely failing, to re-create that magic.
By the mid-to-late 2000s, Hollywood began throwing everything at the wall. The demand for rom-coms and chick flicks was there, but studios seemed to misunderstand why demand existed in the first place. While 2009 still produced memorable films like The Proposal, (500) Days of Summer and Confessions of a Shopaholic, these successful films slowly became the exception rather than the rule.
Around the same time, Hollywood shifted away from original stories and toward licensing popular books. While this may have made things easier for screenwriters, it ushered in longer run times that added little substance. Rather than preserving the depth and emotional resonance offered by the source material, many adaptations stripped stories down, sidelined emotional beats and stretched surface level moments into bloated films.
Recent adaptations like People We Meet on Vacation (2026) have fallen into this trap. What was an emotionally resonant book has become a drawn-out plot that fails to capture the story’s emotional core or properly explain how characters’ choices have led them to where they are now.
When Harry Met Sally… is often considered the greatest rom-com of all time. For those who haven’t seen it, I implore you to watch it this Valentine’s Day. Clocking in at just under 95 minutes, the film manages to cover 12 years of character development while delivering some of the most iconic moments in rom-com history. Of course, when audiences first watched it, those moments weren’t tropes: they were organic, earned and fresh.
One of the biggest issues with modern rom-coms is that they are solely rom-coms. They are no longer stories about friendship, chemistry or finding love, but formulaic exercises that set out to re-create what audiences have already seen. These films use recycled tropes to manufacture emotion instead of letting relationships develop naturally. They trick audiences into feeling something that the characters themselves never convincingly express.
Anyone But You (2023) is a prime example. Starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, the film trades substance, character development and emotional depth for shallow scenarios that exist solely to ask, “wouldn’t it be funny if …?” — a common modern trope used in place that bolter characters’ ambitions and build their arc. These scenes instead put characters in purely comical situations that force interactions.
In Anyone But You, the film hopes audiences will be distracted by the actors’ attractiveness and the excursions, allowing them to leave characters with little depth or reason to root for them. The leads essentially spend the films runtime “looksmaxxing” at each other until the plot decides they fall in love.
Rom-coms are supposed to make audiences excited about love. In a sense, they are selling us the idea of it. But when the love depicted on the screen is so far removed from the modern dating world, it becomes impossible to connect with. Modern rom-coms don’t just feel unrealistic; they read more like fairy tales than reflections of real emotional experiences.
In 2025, the internet was in a stir after the trailer for Materialists was released, a film starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. By the looks of it, the film promised a grounded, realistic return to the rom-com genre that, despite its heightened scenarios, would offer a story audiences could connect with.
Unfortunately, Materialists was not that movie. Not only did the script feel rushed and uninspired, the situations Johnson’s character found herself in also seemed more far-fetched than the trailer suggested. Worse, it left audiences walking away with a rather unsettling view of love, one that, like the title implies, is entirely materialistic.
Modern rom-coms just don’t feel right. It’s difficult to pinpoint, but they lack the movie magic that once allowed audiences to suspend their disbelief for 90 minutes. They feel unrealistic in a way that isn’t charming but escapist.
As Netflix and other studios continue to churn out rom-coms, they show little interest in creating timeless stories. Instead, they chase nostalgia or trends, failing to fully commit to either. The result is a genre stuck between eras, unable to resonate meaningfully with audiences.
Today’s rom-coms are longer yet emotionally empty. Character development is weaker, emotional pacing is nonexistent and scripts lack earned arcs or meaningful context. A good romantic comedy uses every scene with intention; each moment should move the story closer to bringing two people together in a way that feels earned.
I’m not expecting every romantic comedy to be phenomenal, but when even the most anticipated rom-coms of the year fall into the same narrative traps — while employing A-list actors at the expense of the script — it seems I’m asking too much to have just one good romantic comedy. Rom-coms are impossible to perfect. They require risk, emotional honesty and patience. The love on screen must be earned, not granted.
For rom-coms to become good again — much like modern dating — they need to reflect the world as it is, rather than forcing audiences to engage with shallow and unrealistic standards that demand not just suspended disbelief, but complete detachment from reality.