A recent rom-com film has reignited the debate surrounding the genre's popularity. Despite recent years seeing a decline in rom-coms, the author argues that the genre is far from dead, pointing to its long history and the enduring appeal of its formula.
This year, for the first time in a while, a movie gave me the boost of serotonin that only hits my brain when I’m watching a great rom-com. It happened near the end of the Netflix film, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona . Powell plays Gary Johnson, a college professor moonlighting as a fake hit man to help cops catch people who are trying to hire a contract killer.
At this point, Gary has fallen in love with Arjona’s Madison, whom he’d earlier saved from arrest by convincing her not to have her jerk husband offed. Now, she’s done something really bad, and Gary knows about it. Sent to confront Madison at her house while wearing a wire, Gary begins tapping out notes to her on his iPhone with instructions about how to sell their story to the authorities who are listening in. The scene is pure screwball energy, with Gary and Madison’s mouths saying words their eyes and bodies don’t mean. Over the last several years, there’s been much lamenting the disappearance of the rom-com. But is this classic Hollywood genre really dead? My answer: It’s complicated. While the rom-com is most commonly associated with the Eighties, Nineties, and 2000s — the peak era of writer-directors such as Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, and screen icons like Meg Ryan, Hugh Grant, and Julia Roberts — the genre is essentially as old as cinema itself. It’s going to take a lot more than a few fallow years to kill it. And as I worked on my, I found reasons to be hopeful for its longevity, even if the outlook seems grim from where we’re standing. A survey of the past year in rom-coms tells this rocky story. Things started out on a positive note with the Sydney Sweeney-Glen Powell vehicle that opened without much fanfare in December 2023, then slowly built an audience via social media and ended up grossing over $200 million worldwid
Rom-Com Cinema Richard Linklater Glen Powell Adria Arjona
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