Big-Budget Rom-Coms Are Back and Honestly Thank God

It's like everyone finally realized they're exactly what we need. With some tweaks.

- EMMA BATY

It's been more than 10 years since Hollywood killed the rom-com. Since Crazy, Stupid, Love served as the last gasp of a Great American Movie Genre. Those beautiful, glossy films may have been fluff, but they were more than just fluff they were made unapologetically for a female audience and often called out class and gender disparities while also being rich with the eye-candy-est eye candy of our time. But who am I kidding.... why do we need that when we have a million iterations of the same movie in which caped men bash one another's heads in for reasons so simultaneously confusing and important that they deserve sequel upon sequel, right? Like...I'm grateful to the Marvels and Top Guns of the world for propping up the film industry, sure, but can you honestly tell me you remember the plot of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? (I don't even have to ask if you can quote How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.)

The problem with having the majority of big-budget, entertainment-as-escapism movies in theaters being about (1) superheroes or (2) Tom Cruise-aside from the fact that they are largely made by, for, and about men-is that they take up all the budget. The films made by, for, and about women in the past 10 years haven't gotten anywhere close to the same blockbuster treatment from the studios behind them.