I’m more shameless than heartless – and perhaps clueless, too, to hop on this thread so quickly. But I’ll weigh in with “Adam’s Rib,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Pretty Woman” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
I enjoyed In Search of a Midnight Kiss. I’ve seen that guy in a couple of commercials recently.
High Fidelity
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Groundhog Day
Say Anything
Four Weddings and a Funeral
It Happened One night
I don’t think of Roman Holiday and The Graduate as comedies, but I like them too.
What is Roman Holiday if not a romantic comedy? Just a… romance movie? It’s not a drama. It’s pretty light and it has funny moments.
The Graduate is debatable, I guess, it just depends on what you consider comedy. I think it’s hilarious. Maybe my concept of “comedy” is particularly broad.
Sabrina. The Bogart one, obviously.
Roman Holiday is a delightful movie and one of my favorites, but I find it hard to think of it as a comedy.
You are all after my own heart!
I’ll take:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (minus Mickey Rooney)
A Room With a View
The Sum of Us
ditto Annie Hall, Four Weddings.. and Roman Holiday
Singin’ in the Rain might qualify
even A Touch of Class, and Clueless.
Allison, I guess I know what you’re saying. Roman Holiday works as a rom com for me, (for the record, I think “rom com” is a really stupid thing to write, which is probably why I keep writing it – to amuse myself.) but I see that High Fidelity and Say Anything were both mentioned and I don’t think of those as romantic comedies at all. And nobody wants to have an argument about what is anything because that’s just annoying, so I suppose the definition of a romantic comedy is infinitely subjective.
With that in mind, Breaking the Waves is now my favorite rom com.
Punch-Drunk Love!
Some great Woody Allen ones: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Bananas, John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink, and some John Cusack classics: Grosse Point Blank, Better Off Dead, and my favorite — Say Anything.
Oh come on, High Fidelity is hilarious. I mean, look at Tim Robbins in that movie.
I’ve never been a big fan of romantic comedies, but My Sassy Girl is one of my favorite movies of all time. Odd how that works out.
I say yes to “Love Actually”. Also to “Sleepless in Seattle”.
I’m not complaining about the quality of High Fidelity, I just don’t think of it as a comedy because it always made me cry because I am not very tough. It was marketed as a comedy, though, yes.
Grosse Point Blank is an excellent answer. A very enjoyable movie that someone stole from me. The bastards.
The Lady Eve
Love Affair/An Affair to Remember
Before Sunrise/Before Sunset
Sherman’s March is my favorite romantic comedy documentary
The Awful Truth
Bringing Up Baby
Jerry Maguire
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Lars and the Real Girl
Knocked Up
Amélie
Wall-E
I hate when the conventions of a rom com ruin the thing.
I watched the Switch last night. It has a good off the wall premise (man, Jason Bateman, swaps his sperms for donor sperm when his best friend, he wants more, decides she, Jen Anniston, is going to insiminate). Seven years pass and the kid is very much like him but no one really notices. The film also gets points for making Bateman a bigger douche than the other guy she wants to hook up with, the guy she thinks is the donor. Anyhoo….
The last ten minutes, she knows she loves Bateman but is to marry the other guy who is stable and nice. Bateman confesses everything at the engagment party. He loves her, the kid. He swapped the sperm. This would seem like great good fortune for Jen, but instead she gets huffy and says I don’t want to see you again. They then go to the montage where she looks sad on the subway, he looks sad at work then she meets up with him and forgives him.
Just one, I would love to see a rom com where the guy confesses all and the girl says, “I can live with that.” Fade to black
What tends to bug me about romcoms is the way everything seems so ‘fated’, and the audience is manipulated to think “This guy totally DESERVES that girl!” I’d like to see a romcom where women are allowed to be just as shallow as the men, without being guilted into banging the douchey manchild.
@Jirin – I think in Sex and the City might qualify.
most of my favourites have been said, but a couple that haven’t:
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
MY BEST GIRL
Come on people, The Philadelphia Story.
More rom than com, but Dogfight. Does the ending have to be sugary-sweet, happily ever after to qualify as a rom-com?
London
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Sorry, Thanks
would harold and maude count? I didn’t like the movie though.
Harold and Maude counts, you heartless bastard you.
Some great mentions so far. Have to throw a hearty second over to Punch-Drunk Love, but one I didn’t see listed yet would be 500 Days of Summer — very playful and, occasionally, quite clever.
Rom Com is one of the few ‘genres’ that i have no problem dismissing offhand.
Forget about greatness, the good ones are the exceptions most of the time ;-)
Thanks for starting the thread Shotzi. Love them rom coms too! Am gonna have to pick something from my list then.. (http://mubi.com/lists/my-kinda-romance).. lets..see…errrm.. aw..just see the list. Too many!
Some my favorite light-and-easy-watching-romances (although some are not really a rom-com):
Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, 1965, Czechoslovakia)
I love You Rosa (Moshé Mizrahi, 1972, Israel)
Rose Tinted Dreams (Dušan Hanák, 1977, Czechoslovakia)
Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953, USA)
Cousin, cousine (Jean Charles Tacchella, 1975, France)
Yana’s Friends (Arik Kaplun, 1991, Israel)
Belle Epoque (Fernando Trueba, 1992, Spain)
Melody (Waris Hussein, 1971, UK)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004, USA)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934, USA)
My Love (Aleksandr Petrov, 2006, Russia)
Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, France)
Simple Simon (Andreas Öhman, 2010, Sweeden)
love the romantic comedies, but i do think they should fulfill certain criteria. at least for me, the purest romcoms are the ones that arent about the art, but are about making a buck. it should be total big macs for the dating set. not some godardian thought provoking bonerfest. romcoms should attain a level of greatness in spite of itself. it should have the total derivative shitty soundtrack and the predictable plot. boy meets girl, hilarity ensues. and even with all these faults, it, for some reason, rises to the top. as corny as it may sound, i feel the lorne michaels produced ouevre of snl send ups possesses some of the most shining examples of the romcom. mostly cuz of their humble goals, and formulaic plot devices are often times overlooked to reveal a trans-fat fueled french fry milkshake of a pleaser.
Shotzi
Hopefully you’re not all heartless bastards who can’t derive any enjoyment out of a well-made romantic comedy. I happen to like (good) romantic comedies, even if they end up depressing me most of the time. I’ll tell you some of my favorites if you tell me some of yours!
Roman Holiday
Return To Me
When Harry Met Sally
It Happened One Night
Love, Actually
The Princess Bride
The Shop Around the Corner
City Lights
Annie Hall
The Graduate
Marty (This isn’t so much a comedy, though, is it?)
Rom Coms up in this.