In which journalists and pop culture fanatics Kylie Klein-Nixon and Emily Brookes discuss their picks for romantic comedies that will make you believe in love.
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It’s Valentines Day, which for a lucky few among us means roses, chocolates, and romance. For the rest of us, Kylie and Emily are here with their picks for the best romantic comedies to make you believe in love again.
Romantic comedy is a sprawling and uneven genre rife with bad scripts, boringly predictable plots, unbelievable relationships and icky gender politics. Luckily, between us we’ve seen nearly every romantic comedy ever made (so you don’t have to, listeners, you can thank us later) and dedicated a lot of time that could have been better spent improving their career prospects or perhaps learning the rules of cricket to considering their relative merits. Here are the films that top their lists for rom-coms with happy endings.
Kylie picks two Michael Douglas films, The American President (1995) and Romancing the Stone(1984), as well as last year’s Charlize Theron and Seth Rogan vehicle, Long Shot.
Emily starts out obvious with Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s genre classic When Harry Met Sally (1989), alongside Netflix’s Asian-American rom-com Always Be My Maybe (2019) and high school classic Say Anything(1989).
We talk about feminism and diversity in rom-coms, great screen couples, Seth Rogan’s surprising hobby and what Emily would have named her daughter if she had her way - and lots more.
And if this is all too saccharine for you, join us next week when we’ll present our favourite anti-rom-coms.
SHOW NOTES:
This is the scene when Michael Douglas’ president Andrew Shepherd first encounters Annette Benning’s lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade in the White House in The American President.
Here’s Meg Ryan as Sally Albright lamenting that she will turn 40 in eight years, in When Harry Met Sally.
John Cusack ruins us for all other men in this clip from Say Anything.
Here’s the trailer for Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, about which we are VERY excited.
Here’s Kylie's favourite scene in Romancing the Stone, which she completely forgot to talk about (apologies for the poor quality of the video...).
Click through here to take a look at a couple of our favourite dresses from The Oscars, and check out Maya Rudolf's incredible dress.
(I don't care what anyone says! IT HAS POCKETS! - Kylie)
