What Is Happening With Rom-Coms These Days?

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The other night, I sat down to watch the romantic comedy Anyone But You. I was into the premise from the preview itself: Two aggressively attractive people like each other, but also hate each other and insist on making that mutual animosity everyone else’s problem while on vacation. I got my box of Girl Scout cookies, made myself a cocktail, and settled under a blanket. “This is living,” I thought, completely stationary and by myself on a Friday night. It’s no surprise that I’m in my thirties. 

But within 20 minutes of starting the film, I had a familiar thought about this and so many other recent romantic comedies: It’s falling flat. It’s falling really flat. It’s flatter than I am, right now, literally horizontal on my couch by myself. And that’s when I had this realization: The problem with today’s too few but still bad romantic comedies is this: Every actor is acting like they know they’re in a movie. The audience is watching them knowing they’re in a movie. And the details are so bonkers—who goes to Australia from Boston for the weekend?—that they’re not suspending reality smoothly in any way. Essentially, romantic comedies as of late are simultaneously too snarky and too unrealistic to carry the genre. It’s strange. 

Most people have seen the popular romantic comedies of the last two or three decades. Either you watched them in crowded movie theaters, because that’s what we used to do together on Friday nights, or they played so often on TBS that you had no choice but to tune in. My favorite movie of the bunch is When Harry Met Sally, just like nearly everyone’s favorite movie of the bunch is When Harry Met Sally. This is not shocking, because it’s so sweet, and so smart, and so hilarious. (I will laugh every single time Carrie Fisher’s character waves goodbye to Sally at the bookstore, leaving her with Harry staring at her from “personal growth.”) This movie is what a romantic comedy should be, after all: Low stakes, easy charm, and not entirely self-aware. 

I can recommend others, of course. I think How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is the best wide-eyed, 2000s romantic comedy, and has played so many times on basic cable over the years that you can probably picture some of its scenes on command. I will carry a torch for Michael in My Best Friend’s Wedding for as long as I live, knowing that he’s not exactly a great person and neither is Jules—or “chocolate-covered” Kimmy, for that matter (yes, I can essentially recite that movie by heart). Something’s Gotta Give and Something New are also so good, if you want similarly vague titles with satisfying endings. Even Something Borrowed is great for a “what the heck am I watching” plot, on the opposite end of that spectrum. 

But if there’s one romantic comedy that you probably have never heard of, one pick that is everything this genre should be with its own song to boot, it’s 1959’s Pillow Talk. The premise is perfect: Doris Day plays a single decorator living in New York City who shares a phone line with a smooth-talking bachelor, played by Rock Hudson. She wants to keep the line open for work calls, he wants to keep the line open for the ladies. She’s all business, he’s all pleasure, and it all comes to a head in a flurry of clever innuedoes. I’m smiling just thinking about how they talk to each other. Don’t even Google what a “party line” is, let them tell you.

Sure, Pillow Talk is cheesy, but it’s also delightful. Sure, it’s dated, but it’s also transcendent. The most important part about the movie is that both actors entirely commit to the bit and the story doesn’t feel like it’s existing just in the moment when the audience appears. 

In fact, that undercurrent of dimensional fullness in a lighthearted fantasy—that Doris Day’s character is a successful decorator, that Sally Albright is a perpetually picky eater, that Andie Anderson somehow works at a fashion magazine—is what makes earlier romantic comedies worth rewatching. It’s also the major issue with the flimsiness of Anyone But You. That movie feels like a production, while its predecessors actually feel like an escape. 

If you end up watching Pillow Talk, let me know!