Roxanne had its moments.
My Blue Heaven, a personal favorite, has all of the essential elements of a rom-com without technically being a rom-com.
add chiller and syfy to the horror crap fest list…I think horror movies need to fade a bit again…
Thank You! I loved My Blue Heaven, and hardly anyone seems to have heard of it! It’s hilarious. There’s one line I love to quote from that movie:
“Of course you have a sense of humor. Everyone thinks they do, even people who don’t.”
My Blue Heaven is a treasure trove of movie quotes.
“It’s the shoes, right? The shoes are tragic.”
I think that article brings up a major point. More and more women find the themes of the rom-com to be problematic and slightly misogynistic, so they are demanding different types of comedies geared towards woman - like “Trainwreck”, or “Bridesmaids”, or “Ghostbusters” for example.
Has there literally been no rom-coms released since 2009? Of course not. Congratulations. You have won the internet.:rolleyes:
Go look up the term “hyperbole”.
Of the top 25 highest grossing rom-coms since 1995, none were released after 2009 (The Proposal and It’s Complicated).
So I think the numbers do indicate that rom-coms have been in a decline.
I don’t know that I find Woody Allen films particularly hilarious. Clever and well made perhaps. But not like laugh out loud funny.
I’m going to read the article, but I think you do have a point. It is probably a combination of factors such as the old “live happily ever after” model has become less relevant. I had started another thread about the preponderance of Gen-X and Millennial films where the characters had a difficult time transitioning into conventional adulthood. Indeed many of the rom coms of the past decade involve some aspect of the characters overcoming some level of immaturity. So I wonder if rom-coms have evolved into elements of more general “getting one’s shit together” films.
The title of this thread is “Do they not make romantic comedies anymore?”, not “Why do they make fewer romantic comedies these days?”. What’s the point of exaggerating your point? Do you think we’re so stupid that we don’t understand the idea of decreasing numbers? Do you think that we only can understand absolute statements, since numbers are too difficult a concept for us?
And now that we can look at the number of romantic comedies and the amount of money they have made (by looking at your link), we can discuss this subject better. Yes, the amount of money that romantic comedies make has decreased on average since about 1999. But that’s not because there are less romantic comedies being made. In fact, there are generally more romantic comedies made these days. The number has mostly gone up since at least 1995. The difference is that romantic comedies don’t make as much money as they used to make. That’s an important difference. The problem isn’t with what filmmakers want to make. The problem is with what audiences want to see.
I haven’t watched a Woody Allen Movie in decades, and I think that he may have made his own share of lame rom-coms. But if you are too young to remember, he used to be the ne plus ultra of a comedy writer. His writing, essays, TV work, stand-up, and his earlier movies have been called hilarious (not just by me) and I think he has credibility on this. I don’t know if you could find one professional comedian who doesn’t think that. He was the Beatles of Comedy.
If you haven’t seen the early ones, what do you think is funny?
Shock the Monkey?
Deadpool had a pretty good box office. Over $700M USD.
I didn’t…before?
Look, I assumed everyone here is intelligent enough to understand that I didn’t mean they literally stopped making romcoms ten years ago. My point was simply it has been a long time since there has been a When Harry Met Sally, Bridget Jones’s Diary or My Big Fat Greek Wedding in the sense of a romantic comedy that became a big classic that captured the hearts of millions.
**drad dog **- I haven’t seen a lot of earlier Woody Allen films, but I do enjoy a wide range of films. I guess I maybe see his films the same way I see Wes Andersen films. I don’t recall laughing hysterically at Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel. But I really enjoy those films.
Because they don’t need to. Right now you can produce a mediocre horror film for $2 or $3 million, and gross 30 or $40 million. If I were investing in movies right now, I would make a couple of these a year.
He was quite subversive and outrageous in his time and has a claim on being the creator of the modern comedy film, as well as the modern rom-com. (Annie Hall?) But you have to see the early stuff to know who he is. He hasn’t been relevant to me in a long time.
Try Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Love and Death, Whats up tiger lilly. You really can’t go wrong.
I like creative films that don’t make me laugh hard but are called “comedies,” for their story and art. I just find Hollywood films not very artistic. And no laughs either.
msmith537, what you said was:
> But it seems like they stopped making these films in 2009.
But they didn’t stop making those kind of films in 2009. Indeed, they make slightly more of them than they did in 2009. The problem is that they don’t make as much money as they used to. So what we need to understand is why the current filmgoers aren’t as interested in romantic comedies as they used to be.
Perhaps we can see why it’s true if we look at a complete list of highest grossing films since 1980:
http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/records/All-Time-Domestic-Box-Office
Look at the films. There are superhero films, films made from comic books, science fiction franchises, action movie franchises, young adult fantasy franchises, miscellaneous animated films, etc. A few contain romances, like Titanic, but even in that case it’s a big special effect movie with a romance thrown in. Movies that are sold purely on the basis of being romantic comedies don’t make big money. Hollywood still makes romantic comedies, but they are made on smaller budgets.
I think that part of the problem is the increasing globalization of the movie market. As recently as the 1960’s, Hollywood didn’t make its decisions about what films to make by looking at the global market. They made films that sold well in the U.S. The money those films made outside North America was just a small addition to the profit from the domestic market. Nowdays they have to constantly think about how well a movie will sell outside North America, since that’s a major part of their market. American romantic comedies don’t sell well outside the North American market. They are too culturally bound to translate well. It appears to me that Bollywood (the Indian moviemakers) still do good business with romantic films. They care less about the world market and are happy if the film does well just in India.
Another problem is that Hollywood wants films to be part of franchises. In general, romantic comedies aren’t part of franchises. A rare exception is the Bridget Jones movies. There have been three books and three movies in that franchise. They sell well because of that.
The examples you give in the OP seem to mostly be from the 1980’s and 1990’s. But even that is late for the height of the romantic comedy in Hollywood. The high point of the romantic comedy for Hollywood was the 1930’s through the 1960’s. They expected romantic comedies to sell well back then.
Something else that hasn’t been mentioned is that a lot of romcoms are now being made for TV: To quote this OC Register article from 2014, “Hallmark and Lifetime have kept alive the market for some of those films that used to regularly show up in theaters: romantic comedies, melodramas, light mysteries and warm-hearted holiday films in particular.”
The writers write like shit?
The re-hashed leftovers are cold and stale?
It’s cheaper to hire hackers to steal ideas, ones that they can never get right, and since it’s stolen, they can’t go back to the originating writer?
“How would you fix this custom transmission?” “That’s my car! You fucking stole my car…!” “But how would you fix it? It won’t go…”
Because it doesn’t matter how good they give head or anal if they have no talent?
Because a useless relative needed a job to get off the damn XBOX and out of someone’s aunt’s basement?
“He’s good with cameras, especially around girls. And I have pictures of your father with sheep!”
Because one from A, one from B and you get an appetizer?
And a lot of romantic comedies are made all over the world: for theatrical release, for TV, TV series… Sometimes it seems as if half the romantic comedies being made in the US for theater release are remakes of French ones which did well internationally.
Another genre that seems to be gone is the low-budget nudie action flick, like the sort that Andy Sidaris used to make.
Hey, I’d pay to see that! It’d be just like real life! 
The revenue for major films continues to trend toward the international. Action movies translate very well into pretty much any culture (car chases and explosions are cool no matter what language you speak).
Comedies translate poorly, and romantic comedies even more poorly, because cultural factors don’t match up as easily.
I think this is just Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap) combined with the waning role of the media gatekeeper. People have been making shitty horror movies forever. But they weren’t featured right next to the good horror movies. They had short theatrical runs, or went direct to video, and you’d only see them if you had an independent video rental shop. And even then, they’d be easily lost among the 30+ copies of the big-budget horror film.
But all movies can be equals on Netflix. They all get the same little rectangle of screen real estate, and they’re all delivered the same way. And Netflix doesn’t really care if you watch something good, as long as you watch something.