The Rom-Comaissance Is Here, Complete With Fresh Faces And Modern Messes

Welcome to VOL.UME: LOVE Right now, a new series of stories chronicling how we find and experience romantic connections in the digital age. For the entire experience, head to VOLUME.MTV.Com.




it might be hard to celebrate another’s happiness once you are struggling to find your own. Watching former classmates land a high-paying dream job while you’re navigating the gig economy. Seeing the residence your affluent Facebook friend(‘s parents) paid for as you’re struggling  to pay off your student cash advances, which somehow only increase because the months go by. Liking and commenting “Congrats!” With a number of heart and champagne emojis any time your one-time best friend shows off their engagement ring on Instagram, then immediately flipping over to Tinder in desperate search of someone, anyone, who seems attractive enough, interesting enough, and regular enough to get a drink with one night right after work.


The fact is, a lot of millennials and Gen Zers aren’t happy. Can you blame us? We’re underpaid and underutilized, staring down uncertain financial prospects and certain environmental doom. As a result, we’re delaying the one thing that is supposed to be all you need: love. (OK, we’re delaying marriage and having children. Still!)


It’s so easy to be able to see the highlight reel of the happiest moments and forget that no one’s life is brilliant, even if it looks that way on social media. That is precisely why today’s romantic comedies are so satisfying — because they are as painfully aware of that facade as we all are, and they’re tired of pretending.

All of those characters, embarking upon probable relationships, remind us that we don’t have to have our lives with each other before we welcome someone else into them.

It’s a level of awareness that we’ve been missing since roughly 2012, any time rom-coms fully flatlined at the box office. As LA Weekly reported in 2014, the last few years of the 1990s saw numerous romantic comedies occupying spots among the best 20 box office performers. By 2005, five flicks earned over $100 million. Then, in 2013, not one light-hearted love story cracked the best 100.


Much has been mused to explain this serious drop, with fingers pointing at a lazy reliance on tired tropes, hard-to-believe narratives, and even (rather rudely) at the likability and profitability of the choice leading females of the time, Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson. There’s some validity in most of these assessments (not the last one — Heigl and Hudson are successful, award-winning actresses), and for proof, look no further than 2008’s critical and box office dud My Best Friend’s Girl, which was in the regrettable firm of 2009’s Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and The Back-Up Plan in 2010.


But recently, a glimmer of hope for the genre has been restored. 2017’s The Big Sick was a festival darling-turned-Oscar nominee, and in 2018, Netflix boasted some of its highest streaming numbers ever with the Summer of Love, while Crazy Wealthy Asians became the sixth highest-grossing romantic comedy in modern box office history. This recent series of messy, sloppy, however somehow still idyllic stories have revived the heartbeat of the genre that had seemed all although dead by restoring the humanity that had been forgotten.


Imagine the horrifyingly relatable moment in The Big Sick, once Emily (Zoe Kazan) wakes up in the middle of the night and attempts to discreetly haul ass out of Kumail’s (Kumail Nanjiani) apartment because she has to “take an enormous fucking dookie.” Or Set It Up’s most beloved scene, as soon as Harper (Zoey Deutch) and Charlie (Glen Powell) drunkenly climb into his bedroom by means of the the fire escape to eat pizza on the floor. Then there’s the entirely foolish moment in Plus One any time Alice (Maya Erskine) and Ben (Jack Quaid) are awoken by a graveyard groundskeeper repeating “cooter’s out” the morning soon after they consummated their attraction in their unceremonious location.


All of those characters, embarking upon probable relationships, remind us that we don’t have to have our lives with each other before we welcome someone else into them. And we actually believe that reminder because these stories are grounded in real emotions — just as in the film mentioned to have birthed the modern romantic comedy: When Harry Met Sally…


Written by the incomparable Nora Ephron, directed by Rob Reiner, and starring Meg Ryan (yes, mom to the aforementioned Quaid in Plus One) and Billy Crystal, the 1989 classic has been praised for three decades for its refreshing interpretation of love as an equal partnership, where girls can have strong suggestions and gentlemen can be weak. The film launched the genre into a heartfelt exploration of human emotion in the presence of love, paving the way for movies like Sleepless in Seattle and She’s All That in the ‘90s, and Sweet Residence Alabama and My Big Fat Greek Wedding of the early aughts.


And nevertheless, these new rom-coms are giving us something that previous movies haven’t. They exist just behind the world earlier rom-coms so cautiously curated, with their giant apartments, exceptional wardrobes, and trope-soaked romance; right here, in the romantic comedy-inhabited world we grew up in. “We frequently discussed about, in rehearsals with Jack, that [Ben is] just categorize kind of someone who has seen also several romantic comedies, and particularly the kind that we look at and go, ‘That's not really realistic,’” Andrew Rhymer, co-writer and co-director of Plus One, tells MTV News. “And it's sort of warped his brain a little bit bit.”


Seeing these characters dig themselves out of this saturated mindset and experience a more grounded love gives viewers hope that, no matter where we are in life, this sort of love can take place for any of us, at once, and even if it doesn’t have the most pretty execution, it’s real, and that’s what matters.

Seeing these characters dig themselves out of this saturated mindset and experience a more grounded love gives viewers hope that, no matter where we are in life, this sort of love can take place for any of us.

But the new wave of romantic comedies aren’t just tapping into the psyche and emotions of young adults; they’re also exceptionally fun, turning modern, everyday life into a fairytale.


There’s Love, Simon, a coming-of-age story about Simon (Nick Robinson) balancing companions, family member, and high school as he navigates life in the closet — nevertheless a secret online romance begins to open him up in ways he didn’t know possible. And the Golden Globe-nominated Crazy Wealthy Asians, in which Nick (Henry Golding) invites Rachel (Constance Wu) to attend his best friend’s wedding in his residence nation of Singapore, only for her to learn that she has stolen the heart of the most desired bachelor in the nation. Then there’s the surreal Isn’t It Romantic, which sees Natalie (Rebel Wilson), an architect who has routinely hated romantic comedies, finding herself living indoor of one.


These films call to mind the high-concept decorating of the other film credited with the genesis of the modern romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, the 1990 Garry Marshall film starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere about prostitute along with a prosperous businessman in need of a companion whose lives are mutually transformed soon after a couple of days with each other in the extravagant Beverly Wilshire hotel. Never Been Kissed, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and 13 Going On 30 are all descendants of the diamond-studded Cinderella story.


Only this time, these aren’t fairytales for just one kind of person. There really are happily ever afters for all people, without consideration of sexuality, race, or size, right in the genre’s mainstream. The people who were once relegated to the sidelines or left out of the story altogether exist in truer form, and also a whole new span of crowds can insert themselves — and their friend and family member — front and center into these ultra-romantic romps.


This necessary for authentic diversity was something Jeff Chan, a lifelong fan of the genre and the co-writer and co-director of Plus One alongside Rhymer, felt particularly connected to as they sought to cast Erskine in their film. “Maya, without consideration of her race, is the ideal person for the role, nevertheless behind that, just getting to work with a Asian American actress for that part allowed us to cast more Asians in the roles of her family member. So then we got to cast Rosalind Chao, and Tom Yi, and Victoria Park,” he says. “It’s such a key thing to me to add diversity to films like this without making it a big deal — without making it a Asian movie. She's Asian because she's Asian, that's just who the character is. And that's something I've wanted from a movie like this for a really long time, growing up Asian and watching a lot of [romantic comedies], nevertheless never seeing someone that looked like me in those movies.”

There are happily ever afters for all people, without consideration of sexuality, race, or size.

We can already visualize these patterns becoming the norm as we venture deeper into this fresh wave of romantic comedies: Billy Eichner and Kristen Stewart are both preparing to star in their own gay rom-coms, To all of the Gentlemen I’ve Loved Before has already wrapped filming two follow-up movies, the sequel to Crazy Wealthy Asians is moving full steam ahead, plus Golding is lending his romantic-lead energy to the delightful-looking Last Christmas alongside Emilia Clarke, due to hit theaters November 8. Sort in attempt to be truly successful in their romantic comedy aims, what these films really need to do is paint an authentic, 360 portrait of love as we experience it right now. It’s a craving for true emotions that we’ve seen reflected in genres adjacent to the classic romantic comedies — in Someone Great, as an example, the end-of-love story that showcases the modern move to imagine your companions as family member and recognize any time it’s time to prepare a big change just for yourself.


Today’s rom-coms don’t just grant us permission to completely be the work in progress we are, nevertheless they grant us all that freedom. They show that, even if we don’t have it all figured out like some of our most fortunate peers, that doesn’t preclude us from having our own funny love for the ages. That’s why we loved romantic comedies in the initial place: These films remind us that love is attainable for all, even in the most unlikely circumstances — and at any given minute, it might would be right in front of you.

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