Romantic comedies are back in vogue and perfect for self isolation
Romantic comedies have been so degraded over the years, saying you like them is like ‘an admission of stupidity’, well those days are over and just in time for self isolation.
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For the first couple of decades of the 21st century, as terrorism and war hit a new generation, the escapists among us put our faith in vampires, superheroes and teenagers battling dystopian regimes to sort things out.
That didn’t work out so well. So now, arising from the debris of all that epic world-building and destruction, is a quieter and simpler diversion — one we need more than ever right now. My fellow escapists, the humble rom-com is back.
First, there was the global success of Crazy Rich Asians, followed by a hatching of next-gen movies on Netflix, and then friends-to-lovers office romance The Hating Game by Canberra author Sally Thorne became a USA Today bestseller and was optioned for film, and now there’s a vividly coloured wave of rom-com novels coming to bookstores near you.
It’s hard to believe that love and humour were ever out of style but, in the early years of last decade, film critics clamoured to gleefully pronounce the genre dead, after a steady haemorrhage of appeal since its Meg Ryan-helmed heyday. Literary agents reported that editors weren’t buying rom-com or chick-lit manuscripts, so writers stopped writing them — myself included. I sold two epic romantic thrillers to a big-five US publisher, and then two more, but my lighter stories remained confined to my documents folder, like uncourted wallflowers.
Mindy Kaling, creator and star of rom-com TV series The Mindy Project, complained that “the genre has been so degraded in the past 20 years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity”.
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But then, a few years ago, executives at Netflix noticed something unexpected. Subscribers in the millions were seeking out the old studio rom-coms in their back catalogue and watching them on repeat. With a dearth of modern updates available, the streaming provider started to commission its own.
In the book world last year, big-five publishers in the US once again scrambled to snap up rom-com novels, buoyed by the breakout success of modern, sexy reinventions such as The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, in which a woman with Asperger’s hires a male escort to teach her how to love. “Rom-coms are selling well, so that is what everyone wants,” says my US agent, Nalini Akolekar.
Downunder, there’s room on bookstore shelves again for the likes of The Hating Game, the delightful Star-crossed by Minnie Darke, in which a Melbourne journalist sneakily adjusts the star signs in her magazine to attract her crush, a devotee of the column, and, at last, my rom-com debut, Lovestruck, about a charming family who live in the most romantic place on earth (the Whitsundays, natch) but can’t catch a break when it comes to love. Finally, I got a book with a bright cover! And I even got to create my own tropical fantasy island, albeit with a trouble-in-paradise theme. (It may look idyllic, but your entire extended family lives there and it’s impossible to get a date …)
Log into Netflix today and it’s abloom with rom-coms, from office romance Set It Up to fake-relationship YA To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. We’ve yet to see a sustained resurgence in cinemas, though rom-coms were the sleeper hit of Cannes last year, so watch this space. The genre does, however, lend itself to the medium du jour — the small screen — with its everyday settings, its emphasis on script and characters rather than special effects, its binge-watchability, and, bonus, its suitability for watching in self-isolation.
But then, troubling times have long been linked to escapist entertainment. Recently, Australian academic Dr Ping Xiao compared three years of movie attendance in India with economic indicators, and found that far from prompting belt-tightening, tanking economic conditions coincided with an increase in demand for movie tickets — but only for escapist flicks such as action, comedy and romance. “When people are feeling stressed or miserable, the desire to escape and immerse themselves in a movie increases,” she reported.
This latest rom-com revival comes with a modern twist. While there are still princes and meet-cutes, today’s novels and films are more relatable, diverse and empowering, often sexier, and even subversive. Last century’s staple YA makeover story, in which the invisible girl at high school discards her glasses and shapeless clothes and is discovered to be a knockout and therefore worthy of love after all, is deservedly extinct, replaced with the likes of Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy (also now a film), in which our plus-sized heroine enters a beauty pageant because, well, why shouldn’t she? Like Lovestruck, the new rom-com is intended as not so much an escape from the real world, but an escape in the real world.
What hasn’t changed is the hope. Rom-coms have always been all about optimism. And maybe we escapists are starting to realise that everyday love and humour have a better chance at saving the world than vampires, teen archers and superheroes.
Especially when read at home, in self-isolation, with a pot of tea.
Lovestruck by Bronwyn Sell, RRP $29.99, published by HQ Fiction is out now where all good books are sold.
NOW LAUGH YOUR HEAD OFF …
Sorry, we couldn’t resist that one. Less comic but ultra-escapist is our book of the month, the final part of Hilary Mantel’s beheadings-laced Wolf Hall trilogy, the extraordinary The Mirror and the Light. Get it for a 30 per cent discount at Booktopia with the code MIRROR10.
And now is definitely the time to safely connect with others of a like mind — so we’ll see you at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.
Originally published as Romantic comedies are back in vogue and perfect for self isolation