As expectations around love, gender and relationships evolved, the classic romantic comedy formula began to feel out of place. The cliché, with stories built around predictable happy endings and emotionally dependent heroines struggled to reflect how audiences — especially women — were actually experiencing and pursuing romance.
A Reuters analysis of the top 20 highest-grossing films in the United States each year indicates just how stark that shift has been. While romantic comedies were box-office hits throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the genre nearly disappeared from cinema rankings after the early 2000s. By the 2010s, Crazy Rich Asians was the only romantic comedy to break into the annual top-20 — signaling not a loss of interest in love stories, but a structural shift in how they were produced and valued.
Before examining where romantic comedies stand today, it helps to look back at how love stories have been told — and reshaped — throughout history.
THE 1930’S SCREWALL COMEDIES
Emerging in the early 1930s, screwball comedies developed in direct response to the social climate of the Great Depression. At a time marked by economic instability and uncertainty, these fast-paced, dialogue-heavy films offered audiences something radically different: chaos, wit and emotional release. Humor became a way to navigate crisis, while romance provided space to temporarily suspend social anxieties.
What makes these films particularly striking, even today, is how much agency they gave their female characters. Women often drove the narrative forward, matched their male counterparts in economic independence and existed outside traditional expectations of motherhood. Rather than presenting marriage solely as a reproductive or stabilizing institution, screwball comedies reframed it as a site of partnership, negotiation and conflict — subtle shifts that would quietly influence the genre for decades to come.
THE PEAK OF ROMANTIC COMEDY
In the decades following World War II, romantic comedies slowly regained cultural prominence, but it was during the 1990s and early 2000s that the genre reached its most recognizable peak. In a period defined by relative economic stability and the expansion of mainstream entertainment, Hollywood embraced romance as a reliable and profitable formula. Films like When Harry Met Sally, 10 Things I Hate About You and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days thrived in theaters, driven by star power, witty dialogue and narratives built around emotional accessibility and optimism.
Nonetheless, this golden era holds whitin itself a series of contradictions. While often marketed as progressive — featuring working women, urban settings and sharp female protagonists — many romantic comedies of this era ultimately reaffirmed traditional structures. Regardless of the setting – whether the love story took place in a bustling magazine office, the quiet countryside, or between two old friends – the protagonists had one major thing in common: the majority of them were white.
Furthermore, this lack of diversity and critical thinking mirrored the film’s restricted view of success. Female independence was frequently portrayed as provisional, with personal fulfillment arriving through romantic partnership. Love functioned as narrative resolution, reinforcing the idea that emotional completeness was achieved through coupling rather than self-realization.
THE DECLINE OF THE 2010’S
By the 2010s, romantic comedies began to lose their foothold in mainstream cinema. One major factor was the rise of blockbuster culture: as action-heavy franchises dominated theaters, studios increasingly prioritized large-scale, globally marketable films, leaving little room for mid-budget, character-driven stories — the traditional home of the rom-com.
At the same time, audience demographics and cultural attitudes toward romance were shifting. Younger generations, particularly Gen Z, showed less interest in idealized love stories built around predictable “meet-cutes” and happily-ever-afters. Growing cynicism, declining marriage rates and a broader questioning of romantic norms contributed to what many describe as a post-romantic era, in which the universal appeal of traditional rom-com narratives began to fade.
ROM-COMS TODAY
Rather than disappearing altogether, romantic comedies found new life by adapting. Contemporary romantic narratives have moved away from a single, universal model of love. In series like Heartstopper, diversity is not treated as a subplot or symbolic gesture, but as the emotional core of the story. By centering LGBTQ+ relationships with tenderness and narrative legitimacy, the series expands who gets to be seen as worthy of romance.
At the same time, recent romantic comedies increasingly foreground female subjectivity. Films such as Red, White & Royal Blue and series like The Summer I Turned Pretty frame love as part of a broader process of growth, choice and self-definition. Rather than positioning romance as a woman’s ultimate destination, these stories allow relationships to coexist with uncertainty, autonomy and emotional complexity.
In doing so, contemporary rom-coms suggest that the genre hasn’t returned to what it once was — it has adjusted to reflect how love itself is now experienced: less scripted, more open-ended, and deeply shaped by context.
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O artigo acima foi editado por Malu Alcântara.
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