The best romcoms of all time (updated for 2026)

‘Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess, with a very bad man between her thighs…’

Based on Helen Fielding’s newspaper-column-turned-bestselling-book about a loveable but perpetually single thirtysomething living in London, Bridget Jones’s Diary is very much a product of its time (hopefully today we wouldn’t dare consider Bridget overweight or the fact that she’s single in her thirties a problem). That being said, it remains a charming and deeply relatable film, thanks mostly to double-Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger, who injects a lovable charm into her portrayal of the almost perennially unlucky-in-love Bridget. She’s since returned in two sequels, with a third, Mad About the Boy, arriving in 2025.

‘It’s amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy.’

Julia Roberts’ career-focused food critic is the perfect foil for bubbly law student Cameron Diaz in this love triangle romance. The real highlight is Rupert Everett, though, who plays Julia’s trouble-making gay best friend with devilish flair.

‘Hey, you’re not getting serious on me, are you?’

In which Eddie Murphy essentially plays a 1990s version of Don Draper, an ad executive and serial womaniser, who finally meets his match in his new boss, portrayed by Robin Givens. Critics didn’t quite know what to make of sex comedy set in the corporate world and with a primarily Black cast, but it confirmed Murphy as a viable romantic lead, and time has shown that it’s better than the initial reviews - and it’s got a killer soundtrack.

‘Oh! It's official! We are having an affair!’

A middle-age love triangle. Pastry porn. Views and homes and interior design out of Sunset Magazine. If Nancy Meyers is just playing the hits here, she’s rarely had such a well-appointed power trio backing her up. Meryl Streep is a divorced bakery owner having a fling with her own ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin, just as nice-guy architect Steve Martin tries to woo her. What can we say? When a formula works, it works. 

‘You’re terrible, Muriel.’

This Australian movie seems frothy on the surface, but its story about an ugly duckling who's obsessed with Abba also deals with darker issues like psychological abuse and low self-esteem.

‘All men are islands.’

Plug Hugh Grant into basically any romantic comedy back in the ’90s and early 2000s and you’re going to a get a film that’s watchable at the very least. Grant plays Will Freeman, a layabout playboy who has no compunction lying about being a single dad if it will help him get laid. Then, of course, he gets mixed up with a fatherless tween (Nicholas Hoult) and an actual single mother (Rachel Weisz) who melt his defences and push him – kicking and muttering and awkwardly strumming a guitar at a school talent show – toward maturity.

‘We kind of have no choice but to live. So I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.’

What does it truly mean to ‘spend your life’ with someone, especially when it seems like circumstances beyond your control are forcing you together? In summer 2020, when this time-loop comedy dropped on streaming, that question felt particularly relevant – maybe too relevant for some couples. Of course, quarantine would’ve been much more tolerable spent poolside with Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, here playing initially unfamiliar wedding guests trapped in shared cosmic purgatory. More than just a millennial redux of Groundhog Day, it cleverly expands the concept to explore broader ideas about connection, commitment and how to deal with angry suburban dads who enjoy hunting you for sport.

‘You don’t have to walk me home.’ ‘You block the wind.’

There’s something comforting about basking in the comfort of clichés, and this sugary sweet movie is full of them. Sandra Bullock plays a commuter who saves a guy from falling in front of a subway train then falls for his brother. It’s very sentimental, but in a good way. 

‘You think that the world revolves around Gary Valentine and whatever stupid shit you come up with’.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s meandering ode to 1970s LA is framed around the connection between a loquacious teenager (Cooper Hoffman) and a floundering woman (Alana Haim) ten years his senior. Some wrung their hands over the age difference, while even those involved tried to argue that their relationship is more of a meaningful friendship than a romance, but there’s no denying the sheer joy the two characters bring to every scene they share, even when they’re trying to hurt each other. 

‘You know, when you grab a woman’s breast… and you feel it, and… it feels like a bag of sand.’

It would have been easy to make a movie called The 40-Year-Old Virgin that outright mocks its protagonist, and that’s probably what would have happened if it was made by, say, the Farrelly brothers. But Judd Apatow mines the humour of middle-age sexual inexperience without being mean about it. Most of the credit, though, goes to Steve Carrell for making unlucky-in-lust electronics salesman sympathetic rather than merely pathetic. When he finally forges a connection with single mum Catherine Keener, it might be predictable, but it’s never cloying or insincere.   

‘Finally, a man who can satisfy two women at the same time!’

Steve Martin’s finest hour as a romantic lead – which is impressive, considering he’s saddled with a four-inch prosthetic conk. Wittily reinventing Cyrano De Bergerac, this graceful comedy has all kinds of fun exploring the complex nature of desire, and comes out firmly on the side of the unconventionally attractive.

‘Do you have any dishes that play with the concept of time?’

The centerpiece Keanu Reeves cameo made headlines – how could it not? – but Always Be My Maybe is so much more than Neo’s metaphysical restaurant questions. At its heart – and it’s a huge heart – the story of two childhood friends resisting their lifelong chemistry after reuniting as adults is pure romcom gold in the mold of When Harry Met Sally. Keanu may have the wattage, but stars Randall Park and Ali Wong are truly unforgettable as they struggle to break out of the friend zone. 

‘Honey, all you have to be by the time you’re 23 is yourself.’

The ultimate Gen X time capsule, Reality Bites presents Winona Ryder’s aspiring documentarian with an extremely of-its-time romantic dilemma: does she date the uncool yuppie who respects her (Ben Stiller) or the hot, aloof slacker (Ethan Hawke) who treats her like crap? Trust us, in the ’90s, this was a real Sophie’s Choice. Audiences have been debating her decision ever since.

‘When life hands you lemons, just say, “Fuck the lemons,” and bail.’

Judd Apatow got credited with ‘reinventing’ the romcom in the mid-aughts, so it’s a bit ironic that the Apatow-related vehicle that’s aged the best is the most orthodox-feeling. (Apatow produced, while Nicholas Stoller directed.) Jason Segel plays a lovable schlub who blows his improbable relationship with a hot TV star (Kristen Bell), only to half-accidentally woo the hot concierge (Mila Kunis) at the Hawaiian resort he retreats to post-breakup. The screenplay, written by Segel, balances warmth and raunch more deftly than any other comedy of the era.

‘You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.’

Written by Nora Ephron, the brains behind When Harry Met Sally..., this weepy comedy was a massive box-office hit in the early ’90s. It stars Tom Hanks as a heartbroken widower who falls in love with a girl (Meg Ryan) on the other side of America. A stage musical based on the film opened in London in 2020.

‘Is French kissing in France just called kissing?’

This 1995 Lawrence Kasdan caper earns its spot here just by dint of Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline’s spiky-sparky double act. She’s a ditzy teacher with a cheating fiancé; he’s a French thief. It’s the culture-clash chemistry between ignorant American and rude Gaul, played delightfully by two actors clearly having a ball, that makes it sing. The glorious Parisian and Riviera locations don’t hurt either.

‘I may look straight, but deep down, I got what it takes.’

If there are better romcoms on this list, none are as straight-up cool as Jonathan Demme’s screwball road movie. C’mon: Melanie Griffith as a manic pixie in a Cleopatra bob? Jeff Daniels as a buttoned-down yuppie all too willing to let her ‘kidnap’ him? Several scenes involving a dark-green 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible? College-rock heroes the Feelies as a high-school reunion house band? Coolest of all might be Ray Liotta as Griffith’s ex-con ex – not since Orson Welles in The Third Man has a character shown up three-quarters into a movie and shifted the vibes so dramatically.

‘My son will not go out with that girl. Her mother’s a whore!’

Blending sex, love, humour and cooked meat (the title means ‘Ham, Ham’, and refers to the supposed flavour of the heroine’s nipples), this giddily erotic Spanish comedy launched the careers of both Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

‘I'm straight. I’m sorry, mom, it’s true.’ 

Bearing the heart and wit of classic John Hughes, this modern teen comedy focuses on Simon Spier, a closeted high schooler whose life is thrown into turmoil when a classmate intercepts emails sent to a fellow gay student and blackmails him. It’s the first queer coming-of-age romance released by a major studio, and inspired a spinoff TV series.

‘Who needs affection when I have blind hatred?’

For some, Heath Ledger’s signature cinematic moment isn’t the ‘pencil trick’ scene from The Dark Knight but the time he serenaded Julia Stiles with ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ from the bleachers in this teen-movie take on Taming of the Shrew. Indeed, it’s the highlight of this classic ‘90s flick, where Ledger plays the bad-boy high schooler who takes on the job of trying to woo Stiles’s seemingly un-wooable and prickly overachiever. But the whole thing is a delight – it even factored into the 2024 rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

‘Hard work being in love, eh? Especially when you don’t know which girl it is.’

Glasgow – city of romance? Perhaps not, but Bill Forsyth’s timeless story of one lanky, lovelorn teenager’s fixation on the new girl in school still manages to be both dryly hilarious and heartwarmingly sentimental.

‘Honey, don't put a Milky Way in somebody's mouth when they don't want it.’

Would even George Costanza have the gall to try weaselling out of his brand-new marriage while on his honeymoon? Charles Grodin is a Hall of Fame-level schmuck in Elaine May’s cynical satire of love and courtship, a salesman who weds the irritating but devoted Lila (Oscar-nominated Jeannie Berlin, May’s daughter) and immediately looks to upgrade to a young midwestern beauty (Cybill Shepherd). Written by Neil Simon, it’s not the most romantic of romcoms, but it’s damn sure hilarious – that the putrid 2007 Ben Stiller remake is easier to find than the original is a crime.

'After all... I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.'

Notting Hill might be schmaltzy and incredibly twee, but there's something eternally charming about '90s Hugh Grant, all floppy hair and stuttering awkwardness. Here, unbeknownst to him, he falls for an American movie star, played by Julia Roberts, after a chance meeting in his travel bookshop. Their compatibility is questioned, with the will-they-won't-they culminating in a hilarious dash through London for the film's great romantic gesture.

‘Eeeeeeee-va.’

Pixar’s grandest artistic triumph is a poignant environmentalist parable, but at its core, it’s basically a love story. Granted, it’s about the love between a sentient trash compactor and a giggly, egg-shaped droid, and their only shared dialogue is repeating each other’s names, but they have more natural chemistry than you’ll find in the entire Hallmark Channel filmography. It’s the greatest silent romance since Chaplin and the flower girl.

‘Honestly, this has been like the best few weeks of my entire life.’

The optics of a driven female politician needing to become more likeable to make it to the White House feel a little 2016 – or 2024, for that matter. But don’t let that put you off this unlikely but sparky pairing of Charlize Theron as the wannabe Potus and Seth Rogen as the schlebby, liberal-minded journo she hires to make her speeches more relatable and finds herself falling for. There’s even a faint screwball edge to their courtship, as the pair take in overseas revolutions, political rallies and one majorly funny MDMA binge.

‘I had to go to Greek school, where I learned valuable lessons such as, "If Nick has one goat and Maria has nine, how soon will they marry”’?

It’s hard to believe this humble indie comedy is still the highest grossing romcom of all-time – that is, until you actually watch it, and see what an easy pleasure it is. Written by and starring then-complete-unknown Nia Vardalos, its story is familiar: a modest Greek-American woman wants to marry the non-Greek man of her dreams (John Corbett), upsetting her traditionalist father. But the movie is full of such wonderfully observed details about first generation immigrant families – and all families, really – that it’s easy to understand how word-of-mouth gradually blew it up into a massive hit. It’s since spawned two sequels and a short-lived spinoff TV series, My Big Fat Greek Life. 

‘As you wish...’

Fairy tales have never, ever been funnier than this swashbuckling romance. It boasts an undercard packed with so much god-level comic talent (cameo honours are a toss-up between Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergyman and Billy Crystal as Miracle Max) that it can even afford to have Christopher Guest playing the mirthless baddie. Headliners Cary Elwes and Robin Wright provide the magic as lovebirds for the ages, Westley and Buttercup.

‘In dealing with a girl or horse, one just lets nature take its course.’

This musical comedy is inarguably one of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' finest. The humour's charming, the art deco set is stunning and there's tangible sexual tension in the dance scenes.

‘Random thoughts for Valentine’s Day, 2004. Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.’

It’s rare to find a film that traverses the comedy, psychological thriller, romance and sci-fi genres as easily as Eternal Sunshine. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play exes who ask scientists to erase their memories of each other.

‘I know you’re shy and I know you’ve been hurt, so I’m going to make this really easy on you. If you come upstairs, you’re gonna get laid.’

It wasn’t until Punch Drunk Love that critics started taking Adam Sandler seriously as an actor, but The Wedding Singer proved he could at least play something other than a screeching man-child – in this case, a bemulleted ’80s rock frontman hopelessly in love with an already betrothed Drew Barrymore. It’s a simple premise executed with a genuine sweetness few at the time thought Sandler had in him.

‘If basketball is all you care about, why you bonin' me? Why don't you bone Dick Vital?’

Love & Basketball is slotted as a ‘romantic drama’ more often than a comedy, but that’s mostly because the movie’s humour doesn’t feel the least bit contrived. Instead, it’s funny in the way real life is, and how real people are when they’ve known each other forever. Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps play childhood friends and on-again, off-again romantic partners united by a love of basketball, whose individual hoop dreams keep them weaving in and out of each other’s lives. Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood has said her goal was to write ‘a Black When Harry Met Sally’, and she didn’t land too far off.

‘I thought it was just an act, but you really are sweet as fucking pie, aren’t you?’

What’s that? A teen movie that challenges gender roles? Impossible! Natasha Lyonne (now famous from Orange is the New Black, Russian Doll and Poker Face) plays a gay cheerleader sent to a conversion camp to ‘cure’ her homosexuality only to fall in love with a fellow camper. This cult hit also stars RuPaul. 

‘One more look at him with those bedroom eyes and I’ll break your leg!’

It may be remembered for its spectacular Busby Berkeley song ‘n’ dance numbers, but this endlessly enthusiastic backstage comedy all centres around the forbidden passion between a well-bred songwriter and a chippy chorus girl.

‘It’s better to help people than a garden gnome’.

A truly magical film, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s visionary, if sometimes overly cutesy romantic fantasy made the world fall in love with Audrey Tautou. She plays the titular whimsical Parisian waitress who endeavours to improve the lives of those around her, while putting her own happiness on the backburner – that is, until an eccentric artist named Nino enters her life.

‘I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen.’

Say Anything… is much closer to more ‘adult’ romcoms like Annie Hall and The Graduate than it is to Sixteen Candles. It’s a testament to how much respect freshman writer-director Cameron Crowe shows the seemingly mismatched couple at the film’s centre, mega-charming slacker Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) and underconfident overachiever Diane Court (Ione Skye). But this is still a teen movie. After all, standing on someone’s lawn with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel is exactly the kind of embarrassingly romantic gesture only a teenager could come up with.

‘You’ve got an old fashioned idea divorce is something that lasts forever, till death do us part.’

The fastest and funniest screwball comedy of them all. Rosalind Russell is the ace reporter whose lethally charming ex-husband (Cary Grant) just won’t take no for answer. Will she marry her dull-as-ditchwater fiancé or go back to Cary? What do you think?

'Basically you're saying marriage is just a way of getting out of an embarrassing pause in conversation.'

Boy meets girl. Well, actually, boy meets several girls and, um, well, things, erm, get fairly awkward. Then boy meets the girl and after much flirting, some killer gags and Hugh Grant at his most charmingly bumbling and foppish… well, you know the rest. A strong supporting cast and a tear-jerking funeral scene give it all extra heart. ‘I think perhaps, if it lasts, it’s probably for the same reason it got off the ground in the first place,’ director Richard Curtis said on the film’s 30th anniversary in 2024. ‘A combination of love, friendship, marriage, funerals  — things almost everyone has some stake in.’

'I feel like we've died and gone to heaven - only we had to climb up'.

Marital discord is the theme of this screen adaptation of the Neil Simon play, but this ain’t The War of the Roses. Instead, it’s a romantic farce so light it seems to float on air. Jane Fonda and Robert Redford are a newlywed couple who seem to be a bit mismatched: he’s buttoned-up and career obsessed, she’s carefree. Moving into a fifth-floor apartment in Greenwich Village only exacerbates their issues. At no point does it feel like their relationship is in true jeopardy, but that hardly dilutes the movie’s bubbly charm. 

‘Shut up and deal.’

Sad, cynical and fairly dark for its day, Billy Wilder’s tinted-black comedy is nonetheless timelessly funny and ultimately endearing, qualities owing to the respective strengths of its two leads. Jack Lemmon is CC Baxter, a white-collar pushover lending out his flat to the higher-ups at his office so they can carry out their extramarital trysts in exchange for a promotion kept just out of his reach. Then the cute office elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine) shows up there with his slimebag boss (Fred MacMurray) and the whole arrangement begins to crumble – cookie-wise. 

‘Your eyes are the eyes of a man who’s in love, may they gaze evermore into mine…’

Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra star in the coolest musical on the block. The duo play NYC hustlers who lay bets on whether Brando can seduce pious Salvation Army girl Jean Simmons. It’s the movie that brought us the song ‘Luck Be A Lady’, so that’s surely reason enough to watch it. 

‘See me, I’m kinda into ugly. But only if it’s sexy ugly’.

This small-time indie comedy turned heads in the early 2000s by suggesting that sexual fluidity might just be totally normal. Two straight strangers (Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen) bond over their dissatisfying experiences dating men, and figure the obvious solution would be to date each other. If made today, the story’s ultimate resolution would likely play out a bit differently, but romcoms with queer themes are still rare two decades later, so Kissing Jessica Stein deserves commendation for tackling the subject at all.

‘Tomorrow the birds will sing’.

Maybe Charlie Chaplin’s most enduring film, City Lights finds the comedy legend assuming the role of the Little Tramp once more, falling in love with a blind flower girl who, through a series of misunderstandings, comes to believe that he’s a millionaire. Released as a silent picture three years into the talkie era, it continues to enrapture cinema lovers generations later.  

‘Your heart attack could be the best thing that ever happened to me’.

Nancy Meyers, master of the populist romcom, brings her light, frothy touch to this romp about a senior playboy (Jack Nicholson) slowly falling for – gasp! – a woman his own age (Diane Keaton). In typical Meyers fashion, it swerves toward corniness at times, but always gets pulled back from the brink by the smart script and delightful performances at its centre.

‘I’m fucking with you, Ted!’

If it was just a movie about a woman unwittingly putting splooge in her hair, well, we’d probably still laugh uproariously despite our better judgment, but it certainly wouldn’t make this list. What makes the Farrelly brothers’ third feature a classic romcom is that it manages to balance the duo’s signature gross-out gags with true heart, to a degree few ‘dumb’ comedies ever achieve. Indeed, there’s just something about the combination of Cameron Diaz – the mega It Girl of the era – and Ben Stiller as her hapless high school paramour that makes it work, frank-and-beans jokes and all. 

‘There is a very fine line between love and nausea.’

Coming to America is best remembered for Eddie Murphy’s showstopping multi-character performance. Too bad it’s not also lauded as the perfect romcom that it is. If it were, perhaps Eddie’s ’90s output would have had fewer Klumps and more turns like his charming African prince seeking his future queen in, of course, Queens. Murphy is at his charming best as the smiling paragon of innocence, and his chemistry with Shari Headley is as touching as the fish-out-of-water comedy is hilarious. Avoid the disappointing 2021 sequel, though.

‘I kind of feel like I'm on drugs when I'm with you. Not that I do drugs. Unless you do drugs. Then I do drugs all the time, every drug’.

There are comic-book movies and then there are movies that truly feel like live-action comic books. Edgar Wright’s fluorescent, hyperactive adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series is maybe the best-ever example of the latter. In most scenarios, Michael Cera might not be the first choice to portray a superhero, but he’s the perfect choice to play the titular protagonist here, a nerdy Canadian indie rocker forced to go to war with the villainous ex-boyfriends of his neon-haired paramour (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Romance doesn’t get more kinetic.

‘I’ve got some unfinished business with him – I need him like the axe needs the turkey.’

Henry Fonda is a fabulously rich snake expert who falls into the clutches of sexy gold-digger Barbara Stanwyck in this ferociously funny battle of the sexes. A glittering screwball comedy from the master of the form, Preston Sturges, The Lady Eve is near perfect.

‘Nola’s about as dependable as a ripped diaphragm’.

Spike Lee’s breakthrough feature was a watershed moment for independent film, the onscreen portrayal of African-Americans and the presentation of female sexuality in film. In a reversal of most onscreen romantic entanglements, it’s the woman – a young Brooklyn graphic artist named Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) – enjoying a series of casual sexual relationships, and her three male suitors are the ones desperate to convince her to commit. A television series based on the film ran for two seasons on Netflix.   

‘We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us!’

A match that could only be made in the 1980s, Cher and Nicolas Cage hardly seem like a natural coupling today, and it probably didn’t make a ton of sense then. Yet from their first testy encounter in Norman Jewison’s ever-charming classic, their relationship seems touched by stardust – never mind that she’s already engaged to his estranged brother. Few films are as well attuned to the silly rhythms of the heart, not to mention the high-decibel chatter of Italian-American families.

‘The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.’

Former minor leaguer turned director and screenwriter Ron Shelton hit a home run with this sports dramedy about a love triangle – or should that be triple play? – involving two members of a low-level baseball club named Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) competing for the affections of team groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon). It earned Shelton an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, which it should have won simply for the character names alone. Seriously, there’s also a player named Meat.

‘They’re not poor, they just haven’t got money.’

A headstrong young woman (Wendy Hiller) knows exactly what she wants: she’s heading to the Hebrides to marry a reclusive tycoon twice her age. But nature, wise locals and Roger Livesey as a young naval officer get in the way in this near-perfect loch-side romance.

‘Men are horrible, vain and conceited. They have hair all over their bodies.’

Ingmar Bergman isn’t the first name that trips off the tongue when considering the great romcoms, but before he got all gloomy and existential the Swedish master turned out this hilarious and bawdy country-house farce.

‘I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter… which doesn’t work.’

It was loosely remade as You’ve Got Mail, but we urge you to check out the infinitely superior original, a tale of loathing turning to love between the employees of a glamorous department store in pre-war Budapest.

‘It isn’t that I don’t like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you. But – well, there haven’t been any quiet moments.’

Hepburn! Grant! Leopard! The ultimate screwball comedy, this story of a down-to-earth gal, a dippy scientist and a stray big cat named Baby is sheer, ridiculous fun from start to finish.

Melanie Griffith’s breakout in Mike Nichols’ fizzy corporate comedy is still the role she’s most associated with, and with good reason. She’s an all-time charmer as Tess McGill, a secretary at a brokerage firm who, using her cunning, her deceptively bubbly demeanour and a bit of deception, works her way up the corporate ladder - and into the arms of Harrison Ford, her boyishly handsome coworker.

‘In case I forget to tell you later, I had a really good time tonight.’

Anora updated the premise of a sex worker meeting her Prince Charming for a generation more cynical about fairy tale endings, but for truly hopeless romantics, the fantasy of Garry Marshall’s Cinderella story is still viable. At least, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts – her as a brassy LA escort, him as the wealthy businessman who sees her as she’s always wanted to be seen – make us want to believe that getting whisked off your feet and carried to a better life is actually possible. And if that idea is too specious for you, well, it still works as excellent ’80s fashion porn.

‘I’m so happy, I’m so happy! Nobody can be so happy without being punished.’

‘Garbo Laughs!’ proclaimed the posters, advertising the fact that one of Hollywood’s most austere stars had made her first comedy. As a Soviet attaché who falls for a down-to-earth American businessman, Greta Garbo mocks her own ice-queen persona throughout this flawless political satire.

'So... to fully know I love someone, I have to cheat on them?'

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, the real-life couple who penned this film, give us a Pakistani-American culture-shock romance that isn’t awash with clichés. We meet Emily (Zoe Kazan plays Gordon’s on-screen surrogate) and Kumail (Nanjiani playing a version of himself) just before Emily falls into a coma. Suddenly for Kumail, there’s heartache, hospitals and parents to deal with.

‘Why should I listen to you, anyway? You’re a virgin who can’t drive.’

This satirical look at LA high school might be full of frenemies and makeovers, but at its heart, it’s a cute love story. Sure, it’s a slightly perverse tale of romance between Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and her step-brother (Paul Rudd), but it’s cute nonetheless. Its cultural footprint is vast, too, inspiring a stage musical, an Iggy Azalea music video and a 2023 Super Bowl commercial starring Silverstone herself. 

‘I’ll stop a car, and I won’t use my thumb!’

The original Hollywood romcom, this whipsmart road movie about an heiress on the run and the sleazy reporter who picks up her trail scandalised America in the 1930s. It went on to win a bunch of Oscars, though, so all was clearly forgiven…

‘It’s always open season on princesses.’

The film that made Audrey Hepburn a star. And she was never better, playing a tomboyish European princess who goes missing from a royal tour of Rome and falls for a tabloid hack.

‘Is it true you’re a lesbian? If you are I understand, ‘cause guys are so gross. I’m also going to be one, I think.’

This sweet and moving Swedish coming-of-age tale tells of two teenage girls, bored out of their minds by life in their small town, who gradually come to realise the best thing going for them is each other.

‘What can you do with your life if all you can do is look good?’

Among the smartest and most ‘adult’ of all romcoms, writer-director James L Brooks satirises the Me Decade and the TV news biz while also telling a deeply relatable story about love and careerism. Albert Brooks is a talented – if not precisely telegenic – journalist competing for the affections of his work-obsessed colleague (Holly Hunter) with a newly hired himbo, played by William Hurt. Jack Nicholson also shows up in an unbilled role as the national anchor whose job Brooks covets.  

‘We all go haywire at times and if we don’t, maybe we ought to.’

This vinegar-sharp satire about a society dame torn between two equally appealing suitors is steeped in Old-Hollywood elegance and fiery, proto feminist irony. Katharine Hepburn was never more bullishly brilliant.

‘I’m lookin’ at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin’ smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You’re so pretty.’

Is this Adam Sandler doing a Paul Thomas Anderson movie or Paul Thomas Anderson doing an Adam Sandler movie? Conventional wisdom says the former, but in truth, it’s a little bit of both. After all, as lonely bathroom supply salesman Barry Egan, Sandler doesn’t fully abandon his manchild persona but instead trades petulance for shyness as he awkwardly courts the irrepressibly sweet Emily Watson. (While also bursting into the occasional fit of rage.) In any case, the film was a revelation for both director and star, as Anderson showed he could do quirky, intimate romcoms as well as sprawling dramas, while Sandler proved the notion of him eventually vying for an Oscar isn’t so far-fetched as it once seemed.

‘I'm a god. I'm not the God, I don't think.’

Harold Ramis’s standard-setting time-loop comedy uses a fantastical premise to make a surprisingly affecting point about what truly matters in life. Bill Murray achieves peak form as Phil Connors, a cranky, narcissistic weatherman forced to live the same day over and over and over again until he learns to put the love of another person above himself – specifically, that of Andie MacDowell, radiating sweetness as the TV producer unknowingly acting as the beacon guiding him out of cosmic purgatory.

‘I love you, June. You’re life and I’m leaving you.’

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dizzying wartime fantasy has more on its mind than simply love and humour – as the title suggests, it covers pretty much the entire spectrum of human experience, and beyond. But at its heart, this is a giddily funny romance.

‘Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You just can't let the world judge you too much.’

Age gaps are a major bugbear in the era of social media film criticism, so you can imagine how zoomers would react to Hal Ashby’s cult favourite about a love affair between a gloomy teenager and an octogenarian Holocaust survivor. All right, so that’s a bit much for any era, and indeed, it took years for the movie to receive a proper reappraisal. But the relationship, while boundary pushing, never feels exploitive. Instead, it’s one of the great misfit love stories, and maybe the most life-affirming movie to feature multiple staged suicides.

‘Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.’

Separating art from the artist is a tall task in anything with Woody Allen at the forefront, but you simply cannot talk about romantic comedies without Annie Hall, the movie that elevated the genre into the realm of serious art. Allen poured everything he knew – as a filmmaker, comic and hopeless neurotic – into this dissection of a failed relationship, down to casting his ex, Diane Keaton, as the one that got away. (He swears it’s not autobiographical, but c’mon.) But for all its fourth-wall breaking, metatextual flights of fancy and references to Fellini and Balzac, it is, at heart, about what most romcoms are about: love, and why we even bother. As Allen concludes, ‘Most of us need the eggs.’ Don’t worry, you’ll get it.

‘It's amazing. You look like a normal person, but actually you are the angel of death.’

Sure, love can happen at first sight. More often, though, love is a long game, one that frequently begins at mutual distaste and somehow, over time, evolves into a lasting, life-affirming relationship. What makes When Harry Met Sally… the GOAT romcom is that it understands the comedy of romance – and the strange, silly, inexplicable ways people end up together – better than anything else in the genre. Well, that and the pitch-perfect performances, not just from stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan but also Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby as their insta-match besties. And the iconic individual moments: the orgasm scene, yes, but also the Pictionary party and the best ‘run and tell your crush how you really feel’ climax ever. And the charming interstitials, featuring true testimonials drawn from actual couples, proving that sometimes, real life is a romcom.