A scene from Raising Helen. Image credit: Buena Vista Pictures
When you can’t sit through another one of Hugh Grant's charmingly stuttered declarations of love, or when you've saturated your mental mood board with Nancy Meyers interiors—or just when you've already watched The Holiday, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Love Actually, and When Harry Met Sally—in the last month, it might be time to delve deeper into the romantic comedy back catalogue.
For romantics of the hopeless persuasion, rom of film encompasses everything to love about love and more. There’s also the comedic element for laughs, often an amazing setting to provide interiors and travel inspiration, and incredible fashion. Who didn’t take a few interiors cues from Diane Keaton’s Hamptons beach house in 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give? Or covet Cameron Diaz’s winter wonderland wardrobe in 2006’s The Holiday?
Rom-coms are all about escaping into a happy, glossy world which we know will deliver on all accounts. Romance, wise cracks and a heavy dose of escapism. We've never understood how Cameron Diaz could fit that many incredibly stylish coats in her luggage, but really, who cares? That's one factor that all the below films deliver on: we often find ourselves drifting into fantasies of the idyllic lake house at the heart of the offbeat Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass film, Your Sister's Sister, or walking under the nostalgic, moody London skies of Like Crazy.
Another important rom-com factor? Star-power. From Simon Pegg and Thandiwe Newton in Run, Fatboy, Run, to Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant in Music and Lyrics, these underrated films harness starry couples and emerging actors alike. Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne in I Give It a Year are the perfectly mismatched couple from the start, while a brilliant and then-relatively-unknown Olivia Colman plays a marriage counsellor who should absolutely have her practising licence revoked.
Read on for rom-coms that might be under-the-radar, underrated or even forgotten over time, but still deliver the full quotient of heartwarming gushiness, laughs and all-round escapism.
