Something about a good meet-cue or makeover scene makes or breaks a romcom, so how is it that the 90s did it better? The genre is dying for some good material, but it seems like they can’t get it right. Don’t fix what’s not broken. Banter is the number one rule for a good romcom because the audience needs to be fond of the morally gray character or smart, but ditzy sunshine.
In the past years, there have been a few rom coms that made it like Crazy Rich Asians (2018) nothing like family drama, and a good soundtrack. Netflix gave life to a book adaptation of To All the Boy I’ve Loved Before (2018) where the fake dating trope proved to still be a hit and that little sisters should not mail random letters. Even though these hit the charts, the genre isn’t what it used to be.
Actresses like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Garner, Sandra Bullock, Alicia Silverstone, and Drew Barrymore are the top actresses of rom coms. Even though rom coms hold unrealistic ideas of love or what can happen in a relationship, that’s what people wanted. The audience doesn’t want a real-world example of how they will get cheated on. They want a woman who has never been kissed before to relive high school for her career as a journalist (Never Been Kissed).
For example, after: The Series, the book did the trope of “it was all a dare” way better. From the beginning even without reading the books the audience knew what was going to happen. Those movies don’t make the audience cringe in a good way, it’s to hopefully make Harden not have another meltdown over a problem he caused.
Nostalgia can be a reason everyone loves these 90s rom coms so much. It could also be that movies were written with great one liners and punchlines we use still to this day. Watching a movie when you know it could never happen in real life like a man standing outside your window with a boombox (Say Anything).