21 romantic comedies that have defined the genre since the ‘80s

There is a fine line between rom-com and teen movies because many of the latter have those romantic sentiments laced throughout, but a few teen-based movies go above and beyond to appeal to people outside of high school halls. Sixteen Candles is one of them. Molly Ringwald’s Samantha Baker is everyone who grew up feeling invisible to everyone from their family to their crush, but like most romcoms, she gets her happy ending — with cake!

Romance, action, adventures. There is a reason The Princess Bride has been a fan favorite since it debuted in theaters back in 1987.

When it comes to the ‘80s, there were few actors completely killing it like Eddie Murphy. He starred in several films in theaters, a stand-up special that became the playbook for every comedian that followed, and he even got into music. However, nothing made people want to party all the time with Murphy quite like the quintessential romcom, Coming to America.

The moment that older woman said, “I’ll have what she’s having,” When Harry Met Sally went from a movie to a moment in pop culture history. Every romantic comedy that followed strived to have a scene as iconic as that.

No one is sure Julia Roberts set out to raise the bar for romantic comedies, but she did just that in Pretty Woman. The story of a sex worker who winds up with a rich guy looking for company while in Los Angeles, it’s the fairytale the world didn’t know it needed but truly appreciated once it was here.

Did the main character of Clueless fall in love with her college-aged ex-stepbrother? Yeah, but that’s neither here nor there when one looks at the full picture of the influence of Clueless. Inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma, Clueless set up a whole generation of movies that would take classic literature and twist them into movie magic.

Yes, Julia Roberts is a key element in creating a hit rom-com. The box office receipts prove that, and My Best Friend’s Wedding pushes the theory home even more as it ranked No. 8 at the box office in 1997. Fans could not and still can’t get enough of the story of a woman having to go to her best friend's wedding, who she just so happens to also be in love with. It also shocks modern-day audiences that the main characters said they’d marry one another if they were both still single at the ripe old age of…28?!

Sleepless in Seattle proved  Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had major on-screen chemistry, so with the allure of the budding internet, they did it again five years later in 1998’s You’ve Got Mail. It set up movies in the genre to utilize the online space a lot more as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the rest of Silicon Valley started to grow their empires.

LGBTQ+ representation in film is still something Hollywood could vastly improve upon, which is why But I’m a Cheerleader felt as big in 1999 as it does today. It paved the way for films like Billy Eichner’s Bros and the Hulu original, Crush.

One could argue the 2000s were the quintessential time for romantic comedies as they had all the charm of the ones that came before them, but by that point, they had really found their groove. They started to become more formulaic. Audiences knew exactly what they were getting from these modernized fairy tales, which started with one of the greatest from that era, 2001’s The Wedding Planner.

Rom-coms are usually a one-and-done sort of thing. Audiences get the happily ever after at the end and then move on. Bridget Jones’s Diary broke that idea in half when it became more than just a singular hit. It went on to be a successful film franchise with three movies in total.

The 2000s saw the start of larger-than-life movie franchises. Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, and Fast & Furious had already started to build their box-office empires by the time a little indie film with a $5 million budget entered the picture. My Big Fat Greek Wedding may not have had all the bells and whistles of those massive releases, but it became a cult favorite and raked in over $350 million. It just goes to show that great movies aren’t always the ones that broke the bank to get made.

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were a match made in heaven in the ‘90s, but by the end of the decade and into the 21st century, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore really captured audiences' hearts when they were together on screen. Sandler took his style of comedy to the next level when he tossed romantic elements into the mix.

There is nothing realistic about 13 Going on 30 as people don’t suddenly wake up 17 years older, but that’s part of the movie's appeal. It has this element of magic and made audiences think twice about what they wished for and taking a chance on someone they thought was just a friend.

Rom-coms leaned heavily toward romance for a very long time before the likes of The 40-Year-Old Virgin came into the picture. This movie showcased that there was room in the rom-com realm for a dose of raunchy humor. Thanks to this movie, the world got Knocked Up, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Comic book-based movies are not without their romance. Captain America and Peggy Carter, Thor and Jane Foster, and Ant-Man and the Wasp come to mind, but in between those Marvel films came Scott Pilgrim vs. the World based on the Scott Pilgrim comics. Michael Cera starred as the lovestruck titular character, and while there was a ton of action, this quirky movie was packed with a lot of love (and destruction) as Cera fought to get the girl.

There are never a lot of twists and turns in rom-coms, but Crazy, Stupid, Love was the M. Night Shyamalan movie of the genre. No spoilers here, but know that very few saw this movie’s big twist coming!

2012 must’ve been the year Hollywood wanted to turn self-help books into movie gold because not only did people head out to see What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but also Think Like a Man. The latter did incredibly well. So much so that it got a sequel. However, the first one perfectly showed just how a rom-com can thrive with a cascade of love stories instead of just one.

Based on the beginnings of Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s relationship, The Big Sick garnered the couple a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination, and for good reason. While so many rom-coms can have outlandish plots that make viewers think, “That never happens,” The Big Sick was based on a real-life situation of what happens when you fall for someone and soon after they fall ill.

If Crazy Rich Asians were placed in the rom-com Olympics, it would receive 10s across the board.f When a rom-com has a wedding scene that doesn’t even revolve around the main characters and people still find themselves crying because it’s just that beautiful, that’s a rom-com that ate and left no crumbs.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before didn’t break the mold, but it did remind the world how endearing rom-coms can be. It became an instant hit on Netflix, delivered two sequels, and helped launch Lana Condor and Noah Centineo’s to new heights.