romantic movie review english

The 50 Greatest Romantic Movies of All Time

It’s the closest thing there is to a universal genre. That’s because, with rare exceptions, everyone falls in love, or at least wants to. And when you think about it, almost every movie is a love story. Thrillers, comedies, sci-fi — no matter what the form, the spectacle of two people falling in love in the middle of it has always been what makes the world of movies go round. That’s why choosing the greatest movie love stories presents a special challenge. Because really, what isn’t a contender? In a way, though, we kept our criteria simple. We were looking for grand passion, for chemistry and heat and all that good stuff. Yet there’s an ineffable quality that elevates a truly great movie romance. Let’s call it the Swoon Factor. It’s about the swoon that happens onscreen; it’s about the swoon that happens between the audience and the screen. What follows are the 50 films that, more than any others, got our hearts racing.     

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Set in 1963 but oh-so-’80s in its idea of hairstyles and heartthrobs, this sexy summer-camp romance defied its critics to become a classic. Nicknaming Jennifer Grey’s character “Baby” went a long way to illustrate what’s really going on here: The teenage daughter of conservative Jewish parents is forever being infantilized by her folks, until she meets a slightly older — but undeniably adult — dance teacher (Patrick Swayze) who shows her the time of her life. Corrupted by rock ’n’ roll, Baby grows up fast, getting over her initial shyness (“I carried a watermelon”) while rehearsing with her seductive instructor, who practices a racy new style of close-contact, ultra-suggestive moves that can only be read as carnal. Like “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Grease” before it, the movie plays on the fantasy of an off-limits attraction between Baby and the bad boy. — Peter Debruge

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

In this gold-standard screwball caper comedy, a gentleman thief, a lady pickpocket and a Parisian heiress form an elegant triangle, the preferred shape of Ernst Lubitsch — that sublime architect of romantic instability — who loved to test how seemingly solid couples might respond to a good romantic upset. Here, the temptation isn’t merely sentimental, as there’s a potential fortune on the line. What’s more, Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) make clear from the moment they meet that each is perfectly capable of robbing the other blind. She boosts his wallet, he knicks her garter (we needn’t see the deed to be scandalized). The movie came out before the Production Code, and it sparkles with the kind of naughty innuendo that was soon prohibited in Hollywood, but which Lubitsch was sophisticated enough to suggest even behind closed doors. — PD

Splash (1984)

A man falls in love with a mermaid: What could be simpler, or sweeter, than that? Yet Tom Hanks, in the movie that made him a movie star, does not go lightly into his communion with a woman who’s half-fish. Ron Howard’s landmark comedy was one of the first films to demonstrate that a high-concept premise could be executed in a way that was artful and classic: a throwback to the Hollywood that used fantasy to put us in touch with reality. Daryl Hannah, as Madison the red-tailed mermaid, acts with a dazed curiosity and eagerness that’s irresistible, and Hanks turns his disgruntlement into a profound expression of love’s challenge – namely, that we can’t choose who we love, but we can choose to embrace the love that chose us. — Owen Gleiberman

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Amid a career of macho performances, Clint Eastwood tapped into his sensitive side to deliver one of his most indelible characters in Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer on assignment in Iowa, who stops by a farmhouse to ask for directions. He’s greeted by Francesca, a lonely war bride who offers to show him around (an Italian-accented Meryl Streep, who says so much in her silent gestures, like the way she absentmindedly touches herself in the places she wants to be caressed). It’s no big surprise that this dissatisfied housewife develops feelings for this stranger. More touching is Kincaid’s admission that he’s fallen for Francesca, too, but knows she has no intention of leaving her family. Still, that doesn’t stop him from trying. “This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime,” he tells her. The sight of Kincaid looking desperate in the rain, the downpour likely masking tears, is so radically counter-Eastwood, you’ve gotta believe it. — PD

The Notebook (2004)

In the two decades since “The Notebook,” Ryan Gosling has cultivated his image as a chiseled heartthrob to such a degree that he seemed the perfect choice to play a live-action Ken doll in the “Barbie” movie. But back when director Nick Cassavetes was casting the role of Noah Calhoun, he saw the actor (and former Mouseketeer) differently — as someone both relatable and reckless enough to chase his dream girl (Rachel McAdams’ Allie) up a Ferris wheel. No matter what Allie does, he keeps on loving her in the best possible version Hollywood can make of a Nicholas Sparks novel. The secret formula here comes in catching up with Noah and Allie half a century later, as played by screen legends James Garner and Gena Rowlands, coupled with the tear-jerky reason we’ve been reliving all their most romantic memories. — PD

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

The colors gush in Douglas Sirk’s lush 1950s melodrama, about a New England widow, Cary (Jane Wyman), who falls for the studly but respectful hunk (Rock Hudson) who tends the trees at her house. It may be love, but her two grown children — and nearly the entire community — are disapproving of Cary’s feelings, pressuring her to break off the relationship. Seen today, neither the age difference nor the class divide seem like deal-breakers, which makes Cary’s sacrifice seem all the more futile. (Years later, Todd Haynes updated the dynamic with a Black gardener and a still-living gay husband in “Far from Heaven.”) During the 1950s, Hudson carved out a niche as a sensitive leading man, to the point that he’s almost pathetic here (consider the state of him in the final scene). Others may try to meddle, but in the end, it’s her decision alone whom she loves. — PD

The Sound of Music (1965)

You might ask: How romantic could a musical this notoriously G-rated and squeaky-clean really be? But if “The Sound of Music” has incandescent songs, as well as a singular true-life story about the Von Trapp Family Singers (seven motherless Austrian children returned to vitality through the life force of Julie Andrews’ nun-turned-governess Maria), the movie’s secret weapon is its love story. Andrews, while she’s certainly playing the soul of goodness, invests her slow-blooming affection for Christopher Plummer’s Capt. Von Trapp with an almost forbidden sense of broken decorum. And Plummer, who looks like he belongs in a far darker movie, plays the captain as a lost man literally coming back to existence. When these two dance and realize, at the very same moment, that they’ve fallen in love, it’s one of the most electrifying scenes in movie history. — OG

Once (2007)

It’s not unusual to see a musical scale the heights of romantic passion. What’s different about John Carney’s film is that it’s a small-scale, non-stylized, kitchen-sink indie drama, yet in its lo-fi and platonic way it uses songs to create the majesty and devotion of a musical daydream. On the sidewalks of Dublin, a 30ish busker (Glenn Hansard) strums a guitar with a worn-out hole where the pick board should be. Most folks pass him by, but a girl (Markéte Irglová) lingers. They’re drawn into each other’s orbit, and though we never learn their names, a romance — or is it? — begins to play out in the songs they sing together. They both have other relationships, yet ”Once” tells the delicate tale of how, through song, these two save each other. As they give themselves over to numbers like “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” the movie swoons, and you will too. — OG

Pretty Woman (1990)

Some think of it as the ultimate guilty-pleasure rom-com. Others say that its story of a wealthy businessman (Richard Gere) who hires an escort (Julia Roberts) for a week to be his public romantic partner represents Hollywood at it most reprehensibly sexist. The truth, however, falls right in between. “Pretty Woman” only got tagged with the guilty-pleasure label because it came out at the dawn of the modern rom-com era (it sparkles like Tracy and Hepburn next to a lot of the films that came afterward). And as far as morality goes, it’s not the movie that’s sexist. It’s the world of high-gloss commodification that Vivian, played by Roberts not just with the boldest smile of her era but with the vivacity that turned her into a singular movie star, must navigate. Look closely at the dance of chemistry and arbitration between Roberts and Gere, and you’ll see that “Pretty Woman,” in its slickly-packaged-by-director-Garry Marshall way, is nothing less than a screwball celebration of the politics of love. — OG

Mississippi Masala (1991)

Mira Nair took a pioneering risk in depicting the romance between Demetrius (Denzel Washington), a blue-collar Black carpet cleaner, and Mina (Sarita Choudhury), a young Indian woman whose family fled Uganda to the American South. Set in Greenwood, Miss., where locals helped the creative team finesse the authenticity of the movie’s dialogue and detail, Nair’s contemporary interracial romance confronts the pushback of both the African American and South Asian communities to Demetrius and Mina’s relationship. But unlike Sidney Poitier social drama “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” her parents’ reaction makes up just a fraction of the script, which gives complex backstories to each side of the couple. It’s also incredibly sexy, whether they’re chatting by phone in separate beds or sharing the same one in the movie’s scorching love scene. The movie argues for colorblindness while celebrating both cultures, modeling a relationship never before seen on screen. — PD

Say Anything (1989)

“Optimism is a revolutionary act,” writer-director Cameron Crowe quips in the commentary for his late-’80s teenage touchstone. That kind of radical confidence drives high school senior Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), who musters the nerve to ask out valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye), even though all his peers think she’s out of his league. At first, Lloyd may seem like a nobody when compared to his most-likely-to-succeed sweetheart, but over time, he proves to be loyal, decent and unflappably sincere — qualities that made him the model boyfriend for kids of the ’80s. The clincher: Even when dumped, he shows up with a boombox, blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” outside her window. The gesture became an iconic declaration of love for a generation … and still holds up, even if the technology is obsolete. — PD

The Way We Were (1973)

Today, it would probably be a rom-com about opposites attracting: Katie (Barbra Streisand), a wisecracking Marxist Jewish political activist, and Hubbell (Robert Redford), a debonair WASP writer born with the entitlement not to have to worry about “causes.” But 50 years ago, when the story was filmed by director Sydney Pollack not as a comedy but as a romantic drama of tumultuous love-hate passion, the film, in its high-end soap-opera way, seemed to be expressing something new in the culture — the way that love, after the 1960s, was no longer going to be asking people to stay in their ethnic lanes. “The Way We Were” is a hefty slice of middlebrow Hollywood corn, yet the irresistible tug of it is that Streisand and Redford embody their characters on a level of romantic mythology. And let’s not forget the power of that title song! As sung by Streisand, it’s the incarnation of nostalgic beauty. — OG

Carol (2015)

Movies that involve romantic stories of same-sex couples are inevitably placed in a category called “gay” or “queer” or whatever, often by their biggest fans. Yet if you think about it for five seconds, that’s a retrograde way of putting movies into boxes. The director Todd Haynes has made several masterpieces (“Far From Heaven,” “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”), but he has never made a drama more darkly romantic and enticing, more seductive in its suspense, more mired in the agonizing compulsion of love than this lavishly mesmerizing adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel “The Price of Salt.” During the Christmas shopping season, Therese (Rooney Mara), a New York department-store clerk, meets Carol, a woman of the world played by Cate Blanchett with a femme fatale swagger just this side of threatening. Their relationship will be fraught with the drama of divorce, blackmail, a private detective, and other elements that, as staged by Haynes, acquire the heightened quality of a vintage film noir. The final scene, set in the bar of the Oak Room, features one of the most transporting locked-gazes-across-a-crowded-room moments you’ll ever see. — OG

The Bodyguard (1992)

Is there anything more romantic than someone jumping in front of a bullet for you? Technically, that’s Frank Farmer’s job, but by the time Kevin Costner’s clean-cut, ex-Secret Service agent leaps in to protect endangered diva Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) — on Oscar night, no less — we know he’s acting out of love more than duty. Frank sweeps both audiences and Rachel off their feet much earlier in the film, during a concert meltdown where he lifts her up and carries her through the mob — a chivalrous image immortalized on the film’s poster. Amazingly enough, “The Bodyguard” never made a big deal of its interracial romance, and that itself was a big deal. Powered by one of the all-time great soundtracks, the pop blockbuster is a classy entry in the oft-smarmy category of R-rated ’90s thrillers. Recent talks of a remake raise the question of which couple could out-sizzle Costner and Houston. — PD

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Marriage, they say, has its ups and downs. But it’s doubtful that any movie has ever dramatized the ebb and flow of feeling in a relationship with the primal power of F.W. Murnau’s silent classic. In outline, it could almost be a murderous film noir: A man — known only as The Man (George O’Brien), and haunted by better times with his wife, known only as The Wife (Janet Gaynor) — leaves the farmhouse where they live with their child to be with a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston). She wants him to drown The Wife, and part of the film’s shock is that he nearly does. But “Sunrise” proceeds as a series of shocks, which have the effect of jolting love back to life. Shot as a kind of sensuous living daydream, it is the cinema’s most profound and stirring roller-coaster of passion, an affirmation of what it means for two people to be meant for each other. — OG

The Princess Bride (1987)

Presented as a beloved fairy tale passed down between generations, screenwriter William Goldman’s tongue-in-cheek riff on classic adventure tales takes the best parts of nearly a century of cinematic love stories and remixes them for the home-video set (the goal was to get through to media-savvy audiences who thought they’d seen it all). Starting with two impossibly beautiful leads in Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, he builds a legend of swashbuckling pirates, dangerous rescues and well-earned revenge, describing it all (via kindly narrator Peter Falk) as the ultimate example of the form. That’s an impossible tall order — a genre-straddling smorgasbord the studio didn’t know how to market at the time — which director Rob Reiner miraculously achieves by enlisting an astonishing ensemble. Everyone from Billy Crystal to Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn to Andre the Giant assemble to support the sacrifice Westley makes to save his beloved Buttercup from marrying the wrong guy. — PD

Past Lives (2023)

Two men and a woman sit at a bar, and before the audience knows anything about them, we try to figure out what their relationship is. Who belongs with whom? That we can’t entirely tell is key to what makes Celine Song’s remarkable drama such a haunting fable of love’s enigma. It turns out that Nora (Greta Lee), a New Yorker born and raised until the age of 12 in South Korea, is married to Arthur (John Magaro), a mouthy homegrown American she met at a writers’ retreat. The other man, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), is the childhood friend Nora has maintained ties with; he’s at once her past, the spirit of her homeland, and maybe her romantic partner in another avenue of existence. “Past Lives” is a movie that will strike chords of recognition in any true romantic, as it’s about the secret journey that love takes: a communion that may occur in this life, or that may just be waiting for the next one. — OG

Beauty and the Beast (1946)

It’s one of the most poetic distillations of romantic desire in all of movies; you could also call it the “Splash” of its day. Jean Marais plays the Beast, who in Jean Cocteau’s film is a kind of delicate aristocrat with the face of a courtly lion. Josette Day is Belle, who ends up imprisoned in the Beast’s castle to work off a debt accrued by her father. What follows is an intricate fairy tale of deception and magic, built around the luminous ingenuity of Cocteau’s visual effects. Yet the most magical thing about it is the bond that develops between Belle and her disarmingly chivalrous captor/lover, a character so touching in his passion that when Greta Garbo saw the movie, it’s reported that she reacted to his death at the end by crying out, “Give me back my Beast!” — OG

Love & Basketball (2000)

The title of this Y2K sports classic references two very different games, and the rules aren’t fair in either one. After discovering that they both love basketball, Monica cockily challenges childhood friend Quincy to a match (later, famously, she’ll play for his heart). Monica wins that first bout, but he winds up injuring her — an early sign that the dynamic is different when two sexes occupy the court at the same time. That gap widens as they grow up (into Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan). He finds it relatively easy to follow in the footsteps of his NBA-pro dad, whereas there’s no equivalent path for female players. Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood empathizes with Monica, who watches fame go to her old friend’s head. Per the formula, audiences are conditioned to root for the romance to work out, but basketball occupies a bigger part of Monica’s heart, and the movie finds the perfect solution. — PD

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Italian director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love”) turned André Aciman’s ecstatic, wildly overwritten novel of a formative first love between teenage Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and his father’s slightly older — but still relatively inexperienced — teaching assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer), into a sensual summer dream. There’s an intensity to the sights, sensations and emotions that imprints itself on audiences, such that Elio’s memories become our own. One needn’t be gay to recognize the significance that such an all-consuming early infatuation can leave on a young person’s romantic identity, though the movie offers a welcome message to all who’ve struggled to come to terms with their own sexuality in the eloquent heart-to-heart between the boy and his surprisingly understanding dad: “How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once,” he says. “Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.” — PD

Vertigo (1958)

For a director who was known as the thrillingly precise and methodical Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock was not shy about portraying romantic rapture. A number of his films (“To Catch a Thief,” “Notorious,” “Rear Window”) are entrancing love stories, but in “Vertigo” he dove deep into an almost private zone of love-as-fetishistic-obsession. James Stewart’s middle-aged detective falls for the woman he’s hired to follow — played, with a depressive carnality, by Kim Novak, who also plays the woman’s shop-girl look-alike, who Stewart then feels compelled to transform into the first woman. No classic Hollywood movie balances love on the precipice of kink and danger the way this one does, which is why “Vertigo” opened the door to everything from “Blue Velvet” to the career of Brian De Palma. — OG

La La Land (2016)

Damien Chazelle’s glorious, heartrending, bittersweet musical does an extraordinary job of retro-fitting the song-and-dance pleasures of vintage Hollywood into the sunlit freeway landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Yet the film’s most radical feature is the way it brings Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, together with Seb (Ryan Gosling), a jazz pianist drowning in his own purity, and celebrates their union with intoxicating affection — only to show you how their love crashes on the shores of warring egos. What lifts “La La Land” into the realm of transcendently moving love stories is that it presents a happy ending that almost happened, and that could have happened if only life had turned out a bit different. — OG

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Dramatically speaking, the most exciting part of a relationship occurs either during the time a couple is falling in love or else at the moment it’s falling apart. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman incorporates both aspects — albeit as endangered flashbacks — while exploring a fantasy that anyone who’s been through the emotional wringer of a relationship can identify with: What if you could erase all traces of an ex from your memory? Director Michel Gondry proved the perfect partner to visualize the sketchy sci-fi apparatus that makes a brain scrub possible for Joel (Jim Carrey), who realizes halfway through that, however painful, he can’t live without any trace of his soulmate, Clementine (Kate Winslet), the manic free spirit with the Kool-Aid-colored hair. As Joel tries to hold on to the good times while his mind’s being wiped, Kaufman allows audiences to absorb their best memories and make them our own. — PD

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Hugh Grant stammered his way into our hearts, fumbling and fluttering his eyelids the whole way, in a delightfully English rom-com from screenwriter Richard Curtis (who juggled no fewer than eight couples in his 2003 directorial debut “Love Actually”). This more streamlined love story starts where practically every Jane Austen story ends: at the altar. Grant’s not the one getting hitched at those opening nuptials, though he does fall hard for an American guest played by Andie MacDowell. Their courtship is unconventional (it amounts to shagging anytime their friends tie the knot), but the chemistry is undeniable. When it’s time for Charles and Carrie to get married, however, each of them says their vows with someone else. So how do they wind up together? It’s the little surprises that delight. — PD

Out of Sight (1998)

In terms of sheer sex appeal, it’s hard to top the chemistry between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, who play an incorrigible bank robber and the U.S Marshall tasked with apprehending him in Steven Soderbergh’s sultry, time-skipping Elmore Leonard adaptation. It’s steamy from the start, as a prison break leaves cop and quarry stuffed in a trunk together — a cozy way to get acquainted. Four years after “Pulp Fiction,” the picture came at a moment when Soderbergh was experimenting with film editing and features several nifty innovations, including an unconventional love scene that turns up the heat by cutting between flirtation and payoff. In one thread, Jack Foley and Karen Sisco roleplay in the hotel bar, pretending to be strangers. Skipping ahead, it teases glimpses of the “time out” where all this cocktail talk is headed: a striptease upstairs, in which the pair put aside their differences long enough to make love. — PD

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Great as he is, we don’t tend of think of Daniel Day-Lewis as an overwhelmingly romantic movie star. In Philip Kaufman’s heady, intoxicating, high-wire adaptation of the Milan Kundera novel, he plays Tomas, a character who is very much a fickle Lothario — a randy physician in 1960s Prague who bounces from one conquest to the next, though he does have a regular thing going with Sabine (Lena Olin), an artist who likes to spice their lovemaking with mirrors and bowler hats. But then Tomas meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), whose gravity pulls him down to earth. And then the Soviet tanks come rolling in, blowing up all their lives. When that happens, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” becomes one of the most seriously moving love stories in cinema, a tale of three lost souls yearning to connect, to survive, to unlock love’s mystery. — OG

A Star Is Born (1954)

For 30 years, the Judy Garland/James Mason version of “A Star Is Born” was tainted by the messy circumstances of its making. The script kept getting rewritten, Garland was a notoriously unstable presence on set, and when the movie premiered in New York, it was three hours long — but executives at Warner Bros. then chopped it by half an hour, without so much as consulting the director, George Cukor. Yet when the movie was re-released in the ’80s, its reputation was elevated in a way that’s comparable to what happened with Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” A world of moviegoers discovered that Cukor had crafted one of the most darkly entrancing love stories ever made. Its haunted spirit of rapture and loss is incarnated in Garland’s performance of “The Man That Got Away,” in Mason’s jaw-dropping drunken slap of Garland during a scene set at the Oscars, and in the tragic finale, which touches the secret heart of love: the faith necessary to sustain it. — OG

The Remains of the Day (1993)

Repression and strict social restraints are constantly keeping lovers apart in the works of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who together made a career’s worth of exquisitely nuanced literary adaptations frequently (and often unfairly) lumped in with lesser, made-for-TV costume dramas. While “A Room with a View” and “Maurice” are more overtly passionate, the trio’s take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s celebrated novel offers a heartbreaking portrayal of a couple kept apart by codes beyond their control. In this case, a butler (Anthony Hopkins) born and raised to serve the English aristocracy is so mindful of his place that he can’t bring himself to tell the housekeeper he adores (Emma Thompson) his true feelings. It’s wrenching to watch this docile attendant struggle between emotions for a colleague and devotion to his job, and yet, between the lines, and in these two masterful performances, are written volumes. — PD

Sid and Nancy (1986)

The director Alex Cox brought off something singularly audacious by centering a punk biopic on Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols’ bassist and all-around showman-fuckup who was so dissolute most of the time that he could barely play his instrument or keep from nodding out. Yet the ultimate audacity of Cox’s film is that it dares to present Vicious’s relationship with Nancy Spungen, the torn-fishnet groupie from suburban Pennsylvania who turned him into a heroin addict, as if they were the Tristan and Isolde of the rock ‘n’ roll gutter. As Sid, Gary Oldman gives what may still be his greatest performance, and Chloe Webb, as Nancy, gives what is simply one of the most powerful performances in the history of cinema. Her Nancy is a caterwauling liar and junkie, such a damaged shard of a human being that it tears your heart apart just to behold her. Nancy and Sid are barely functional narcissist addicts, yet their love affair is fused on an animal level; they need each other to live, and to die. “Sid and Nancy” is raw and exhilarating — the greatest of all music biopics, and (not so incidentally) the most romantic. — OG

Moonlight (2016)

Told through poetic glimpses over three separate chapters in the life of its main character, “Moonlight” doesn’t feel like a love story at first. Director Barry Jenkins introduces Chiron at age 10, too young to recognize his own homosexuality, and yet already being teased as soft by his peers. In the middle segment, the boy meets Kevin, with whom he starts to explore his feelings, only to have that possibility derailed by bullying. Subverting stereotypes at every turn, the movie gives this lost soul a second chance in the final stretch, focusing on a tender, tentative reunion between Chiron (bulked up and thick-skinned from his time in prison) and his former crush. By this point, audiences are so invested in the character that “Moonlight” broke free of the rigid box that confines most queer stories to LGBT audiences, making it a crossover success and historic Oscar winner. — PD

The Apartment (1960)

The dialogue still zings and the heartbreak still stings in Billy Wilder’s ahead-of-its-time depiction of two Manhattan office drones who are both exploited by the same manager: Jack Lemmon plays ultra-cynical insurance salesman Bud Baxter, while Shirley MacLaine is Fran Kubelik, the elevator girl who brightens his days … but loves his boss. The plot (which involves Bud lending his place to higher-ups to schtup their secretaries) anticipates the #MeToo movement, while also acknowledging the reality that well-intentioned workers frequently fall for their colleagues. Bud goes about it the relatively respectful way, while Fran’s plight illustrates how unfair the world can be to those who mix business and pleasure. For audiences that love “Mad Men,” but identify with the underdog, the movie poses a wonderfully adult conundrum — one which forces Bud to decide between personal ethics and professional ambition, knowing it could all go sideways for him, career-wise. — PD

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

In the New Hollywood ’70s, a great many aspects of classic big-screen romance — the unabashed yearning, the sparkle, the lock-step gender roles — began to fall by the wayside. There was a lot of chatter about how romance itself was fading out of the culture. But that’s part of what made “An Officer and a Gentleman” loom so large. In its meticulous throwback of a story about a drifter, played with pinpoint narcissistic glamour by Richard Gere, who enlists in the Navy and falls for one of the “Puget Sound Debs” (Debra Winger) who want to marry a future jet pilot, the movie seemed to bring back, for the post-feminist era, the kind of shamelessly ardent love story that had fallen out of fashion. It helped that director Taylor Hackford infused it all with a contempo grittiness. As a basic-training movie, “Officer” anticipated much of ”Full Metal Jacket,” but what makes it indelible is the hungry desire enacted by Debra Winger, whose gaze of soulful adoration brings Gere fully alive as a romantic actor. — OG

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Cinema could hardly conjure a more lovely or elegant couple than cigarette-smoking Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, who floats through stairwells in form-fitting cheongsams. Operating on the wisp of a plot, improvised and evolved over nearly a year, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai denies these two beautiful avatars a conventional romance. They play neighbors who discover that their spouses are having an affair, and rather than sink to the same level, they indulge in a bit of imaginative detective work, reenacting how their partners might have met. This thin outline leaves near-infinite room for Wong to evoke a subjective range of responses from his audience, using the full range of cinematic tools — color, costume, gesture, music — to solicit a different reading from each viewer. Your mileage may vary, but keep in mind: Wong’s a feel-maker as much as a filmmaker, rewriting the rules via this elliptical dance between unrequited lovers. — PD

Moonstruck (1987)

At early test screenings, audiences weren’t falling for Norman Jewison’s now-classic New York romance the way they were supposed to, until he laid the tune “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie…” over the opening credits. Cher tamped down her natural glamour to embody pragmatic Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini, who’s ready to settle for Johnny’s (Danny Aiello) passionless marriage proposal when she meets his brother Ronnie, played by a hot-blooded Nicolas Cage. Let’s just say, Ronnie gives this sensible Catholic woman reason to go to confession. The script by John Patrick Shanley is all but bursting with culturally specific detail, from drool-worthy dishes to unusual superstitions, but it’s the colorful ensemble — family members who want what’s best for Loretta — that ultimately serves to validate her seemingly reckless choice. After a lifetime of listening to her head, she finally decides to follow her heart. That’s amore! — PD

City Lights (1931)

Charlie Chaplin stubbornly resisted the film industry’s embrace of sound, releasing this silent treasure into a sea of talkies. Cinema may have gone a different direction, but his stubborn adherence to pantomime (plus his obsessive need to reshoot every shot until perfect) makes this love story seem all the more timeless, as Chaplin’s signature character, the Tramp, falls for a blind flower seller (Virginia Cherrill). She mistakes him for a wealthy man, and the Tramp allows her to go on imagining him that way in the most poetic version of a familiar rom-com trope ever committed to film: At some point, he’ll have to come clean. Will she still love him when she discovers the truth? The final scene, in which she recognizes the vulnerable fool after her vision has been restored, not by sight but by contact, ranks among the medium’s most romantic. — PD

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Of the many qualities that made it a revolutionary movie, two stand above all others. The first, and most talked about, is how violent it was — the bystander shot through the eye, the climactic slow-motion blood ballet, and everything else that rubbed the audience’s nose in what being a criminal really meant. But the other quality that defined “Bonnie and Clyde” was how shockingly sultry and romantic it was. The ads for the movie said, “They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people.” The subtext was that something in the connection between Faye Dunaway’s torrid hunger and Warren Beatty’s vulnerable stud glamour was itself so dangerous that it was lethal. Just check out the two stars’ faces as they exchange one last look before being strafed to death by a hail of bullets. That look is the essence of true love. — OG

The 'Before' Trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013)

Taken by itself, 1995’s “Before Sunrise” represents the perfect encapsulation of young love: Two strangers meet on a train, get off together in Vienna and spend the night walking and talking (there’s some debate as to whether they make love, as the movie’s too modest to show it). Nine years later, director Richard Linklater delivered one of the most satisfying sequels of all time in “Before Sunset,” reuniting with his two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy), in Paris. Their time is once again limited, but now, the conversation deals with their regrets. But the attraction remains, and the movie ends with the implication they wind up together. But is it happily ever after? Linklater and company caught up with the pair once again with “Before Midnight,” and the movie finds them together, but dissatisfied, acknowledging the challenges that confront couples after nearly a decade together. It was impossible to guess when they first met how deep this relationship would go, and still anybody’s guess how it will end. — PD

Annie Hall (1977)

“I lurve you,” says Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer, coming about as close as he can to declaring his feelings for Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), the beguiling thrift-shop space cadet who charmed the world with her la-di-da innocence. Allen’s late-’70s classic was, at the time, a new kind of love story — the saga of a “relationship,” which is to say a partnership not truly built to last. And maybe Alvy Singer had to say “lurve” instead of “love” because, deep down, he wasn’t really sure that he could commit himself to the L-word. Yet the magic of “Annie Hall” is that is channeled how an entire generation had come to regard love in the age of therapeutic navel-gazing: as something intoxicating yet transient, rooted in a seems-like-old-times nostalgia that felt more at home looking back than forward. — OG

Jerry Maguire (1996)

Tom Cruise had always been a solo vessel — a cruise missile of a movie star. It was Cameron Crowe’s inspiration, in casting Cruise as a sports agent who gets tossed out of the game and has to reinvent himself as a better person in order to come back, to pair Cruise with Renée Zellweger, an unknown actor who did not come off like some female-movie-star equivalent of Tom Cruise. She had a homespun allure that seemed to be calling his cockiness, his very stardom, on the carpet. The beauty of the line “You complete me” is that Cruise seemed, at last, to be letting down the guard of a dozen years of mega-stardom. The beauty of “You had me at hello” is that it reminds us of how easy love is when it’s real. — OG

Roman Holiday (1953)

Audrey Hepburn plays the fed-up crown princess of an unspecified country in this escapist romp through the Eternal City. The project kicked off a seven-picture run with Paramount, during which she may as well have been the queen of Hollywood romances: “Sabrina,” “Funny Face,” “My Fair Lady” and more. Suffocating under the obligations of her position, she sneaks out during a European tour, landing in the hands of Gregory Peck’s dishonest (yet honorable) American newspaperman. He thinks he’s hit the jackpot, betting his editor he can deliver an exclusive interview with the princess — but he doesn’t gamble on falling for the dame. Their whirlwind romance lasts but a day, but in that time, the reporter gives Ann/Anya/Audrey a taste of freedom. She plays it coy for most of the movie, but the closeup on her face at the end says it all. — PD

Gone with the Wind (1939)

The scene where Clark Gable carries Vivien Leigh up the stairs, with intimations of (to put it mildly) erotic coercion, would not pass muster today. Yet that scene, and others that rhyme with it, are part of what make the most epic of Old Hollywood love stories one of the most darkly complicated and enthralling of Old Hollywood love stories. Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara is fierce, strong, manipulative — the Southern belle as aristocratic vixen — and so she and Rhett Butler are destined to turn love into a battle that’s doomed to end in a draw. But what heat and light their fireworks give off! “Gone with the Wind” is a movie that’s now seen as “problematic,” yet one of the most seemingly imperfect things about it — the alternating currents of sex and anger, devotion and contempt that fuel the central relationship — is what makes it such a tumultuous classic. — OG

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

A couple needn’t end up together for a love story to stand the test of time. In the case of Jacques Demy’s bittersweet musical, there’s a relatable quality to the way circumstances keep a working-class French couple from their happily ever after. That downbeat fate serves to balance the bright colors and bold choice of delivering every line of dialogue, no matter how banal, through song. That recitative strategy is common enough in opera, but downright revolutionary on film, still fresh and highly unusual all these years later. Naive young Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve, doll-like at 19) sells umbrellas in the family shop. Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) fixes cars at a nearby garage. They seem destined to be together, until military service calls him away. Michel Legrand’s score leans into the melancholy what might have been in what feels like a snow globe rendering of real life. — PD

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

It’s a queer love story set entirely in the closet. Yet by dramatizing the inner lives of two cowboys who find a romantic home on the range in early 1960s Wyoming, Ang Lee’s breathtaking adaptation of the Annie Proulx short story undermined every expectation of contemporary audiences. In showing us two men who discover a love that they themselves think is forbidden, the film dramatizes how prejudice can worm its way into the very fabric of people’s lives; it also demonstrates that the myth of the straight-as-an-arrow American macho he-man is just that – a myth. At the same time, our yearning for Ennis and Jack to make a life for themselves becomes overwhelming in its heartbreak. The performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are indelible — and, in Ledger’s case, miraculous, as he turns the muffled, barely articulate Ennis into a living metaphor for a love that cannot speak its name. — OG

Ghost (1990)

It’s a love story, a ghost story, a corporate crime story, a pottery story, and a movie in which Whoopi Goldberg plays the world’s funniest cut-up mystic. But who would have guessed that just four months after “Pretty Woman,” it would be the headiest romantic movie of its year? The director, Jerry Zucker, was a veteran of the “Airplane!” troupe, yet somehow he juggled all these elements to touch a chord of pure fairy-tale rapture, spinning out the story of a New York banker who’s killed by a mugger and returns as a ghost to protect his artist girlfriend. The way Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore bond across the ectoplasmic divide is at once thrilling and moving (true love, it seems, knows no restrictions, from either physics or the spirit world). The film turned the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” into a retro smash, but only because of how it tapped the film’s emotions: intimate, operatic, quavering with devotion. — OG

Brief Encounter (1945)

It all began with a little piece of grit in her eye. Fortunately — or not — for Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), a doctor was present to remove the offending particle, and when her vision cleared, there he stood, Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), handsome and kind. The train station where this meeting happens serves as a kind of romantic purgatory, with each locomotive that steams through reminding Laura and Alec of their obligations to their actual partners. But every Thursday, they meet in town, too weak to resist the growing love between them — feelings which the conservative forces of the time could not condone, but which spoke to a human experience too widespread to go ignored. And so David Lean’s slender, achingly honest film has stood for years, staunchly refusing to judge two would-be adulterous souls, letting audiences in on a secret that even their spouses don’t suspect. — PD

A Star Is Born (2018)

It’s a seesawing Hollywood love story that’s been told on the big screen close to half a dozen times, yet never more powerfully or artfully than by Bradley Cooper in his astonishing directorial debut. From the bombastic kitsch of the 1976 Streisand/Kristofferson version, Cooper borrowed the idea of turning the central character into a rock ‘n’ roll star, and his performance as Jackson Maine — a half-deaf drunken burnout, running on fumes, even though he’s able to fool the world into thinking he’s still a rock god — grounds the soap-opera story in something disarmingly earthy and real. When Jackson meets Ally (Lady Gaga), a budding singer-songwriter, and invites her onstage to sing “Shallow,” you will get chills the way few romantic movies have given them to you — and the tremors don’t let up, as the two get on a serpentine roller-coaster of love vs. jealousy, arena rock vs. dance pop, and tragedy slipping into redemption. — OG

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Baz Luhrmann’s visionary jukebox musical is in love with a lot of things: the look and feel of faux 1890s sound-stage Paris (that nightclub windmill etched in light), the epiphany of pop songs like Elton John’s “Your Song” when they pop up in what should be the wrong place (but then why does it feel so right?). Mostly, though, the film is in love with Christian and Satine, the romantic bohemians played by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, who summon gazes of such doomed longing that the film’s ultimate love affair seems to be with love itself — the unearthly kind, the kind that lives as an impossible dream. — OG

To Catch a Thief (1955)

From “The Awful Truth” to “An Affair to Remember,” Cary Grant enjoyed a two-decade run as Hollywood’s most dapper leading man, romancing everyone from Katharine Hepburn to Ingrid Bergman, sometimes multiple times over. But it was paired with impossibly elegant star (and future princess) Grace Kelly that Grant sparkled brightest, playing a notorious jewel thief who finds Kelly’s wealthy American tourist even more irresistible than her invaluable diamond necklace. Like a well-practiced cat burglar, this sprightly Hitchcock movie tiptoes so lightly it hardly touches the ground, sweeping audiences away to the chicest of locations on the French Riviera. Whether it’s the scene of Kelly’s gems outdazzling a fireworks show (she stands in the shadow while her diamonds glisten in full view of Grant) or the hilltop picnic overlooking Monaco, the vibrant full-color fling gave landlocked Americans a fizzy Mediterranean fantasy featuring the most distinguished couple imaginable. — PD

Titanic (1997)

The swooniest romantic movie of its time, and also the most sublime, James Cameron’s ocean disaster epic is the rare Hollywood blockbuster that achieves a larger-than-life quality. Yet its secret weapon as a love story is the too-often-unacknowledged deftness of its storytelling. As Jack and Rose, the sweethearts from opposite sides of the class divide, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have an effervescent chemistry, yet they’re playing starry-eyed youths caught in a puppy-love fling. The implication is that their union might last just about as long as the Titanic’s voyage — were it not for that fateful iceberg. In “Titanic,” it’s disaster itself that elevates love into something timeless. — OG

Casablanca (1942)

It was often said that in the 20th century, the movies taught people how to fall in love. You certainly know that watching “Casablanca.” In all of cinema, there is no love connection more pure, more impassioned, more haunted by the past, more alive in the present, more complicated by circumstance than the one between Rick (Humphrey Bogart), the expatriate owner of a shady Moroccan nightclub and gambling den, and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the woman he fell in love with in Paris in 1940, only to be abandoned by her for mysterious reasons. Do they still love each other? The answer to that is as simple as listening to Sam (Dooley Wilson), the saloon pianist, play “As Time Goes By” and hearing that it’s really about how a kiss is just a kiss…for all time. Yet if Michael Curtiz’s ageless Hollywood classic celebrates what love is, it’s also about the deepest level of what love means : not just rapture but sacrifice, devotion to the other, a giving over of oneself to something larger. “Casablanca” remains the ultimate big-screen romance, in part because Bogart and Bergman show us that love is a force within us powerful enough to connect to — and save — the world. — OG

More From Our Brands

Watch paul mccartney, the eagles perform ‘let it be’ at jimmy buffett tribute concert, this $68 million colorado compound has 7 homes across 245 acres, nycfc $780 million stadium project receives city council approval, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, chris farley biopic to star blackbird’s paul walter hauser; josh gad to direct, verify it's you, please log in.

The Most Romantic Movies of All Time

Let’s make love, not hate.

Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Love is patient. And love is kind. But love can also be a blow to the ego, a punch to the gut, and a pain in the ass. Just look to the best romance movies for proof. From timeless classics like An Affair to Remember and Casablanca, to contemporary takes including Cyrano, Love, Simon, and Moonlight, love is explored onscreen in all its glorious nuances.

The Notebook (2004)

Love Jones (1997)

Nia Long and Larenz Tate get hot and bothered in this classic from writer and director Theodore Witcher. They play a couple whose happenstance meeting in Chicago blooms into a relationship the two can’t seem to define. Though it was a box office dud back in the ‘90s, this is one you’ll want to rekindle. Watch Now

Casablanca (1942)

You can’t mention romance without referencing Humphrey Bogart’s Rick and Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa. A wartime romance declaring only love can stand the test of time, Casablanca does what most romantic films dare never to do: Forgo the “typical” happy ending. And we’re so glad it does. Watch Now

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Love is never simple in a Jane Austen narrative. In Pride & Prejudice , Mr. Darcy is a man in love with Elizabeth Bennet—but has a hard time making that known. Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen do their duty as lady and gentleman, and the dialogue in Joe Wright’s romance might make you weak in the knees. Watch Now

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Wong Kar-wai's melancholic period drama is as romantic as the costume silks are vibrant. A love square of sorts, the story charts the sexual tension blossoming between two neighbors who’ve just learned their partners are sleeping with each other. Like any good romp between the sheets, this one takes its time. Watch Now

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Can men and women actually just be friends? It’s the predicament put to the test in Nora Ephron’s rom-com that made Billy Crystal a superstar, Meg Ryan every woman’s heroine, and Katz’s Deli the infamous New York City setting of the fake orgasm heard 'round the world. Watch Now

Titanic (1997)

All aboard James Cameron’s epic melodrama about love on the high seas. Even though the film snagged a boatload of shiny statues, its narrative harbors a fate not nearly as joyous. Feelings about the extra real estate on the big floating door aside, we’d have it no other way. For Jack and Rose, our hearts will go on. Watch Now

The Best Man (1999)

Grab a plus-one for Malcolm D. Lee's wedding drama starring Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, and Morris Chestnut. Precluding the walk down the aisle, the film works between timelines to reveal the secrets, hookups and friendship fractures plaguing Harper (Diggs) and his pals. But, oh, the chemistry between Lathan and Diggs. Watch Now

Roman Holiday (1953)

Audrey Hepburn made Breakfast at Tiffany’s a pop culture phenomenon, but William Wyler made lunch, dinner, and riding a Vespa in Rome a cultural fixture. His film, winner of three Oscars, kick-started a crop of American movies filmed in Rome. But we’re here to talk about romance. So here . Watch Now

The Princess Bride (1987)

It's a fact: the love between Westley and his Buttercup is not only strong, but it is true. How true? Let us count the ways . “True love” may be mentioned more times in Rob Reiner’s fantasy-adventure-romance than there are actual adventures to be had, but it doesn’t get any more swoon-worthy than this. Watch Now

Like Water for Chocolate (1993)

Giving new meaning to hot chocolate , Alfonso Arau’s treat of a romantic drama belongs to a cook whose desires are baked into her dishes, filling all who dine on her feasts with whatever emotion she was feeling at the time of conception. Seemingly the inspiration for the Sarah Michelle Gellar headliner Simply Irresistible , this magical Mexican delight is grade-A fare.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Based on the same-name story by author James Baldwin and featuring a simply sublime soundtrack, Barry Jenkins’s superb film stars KiKi Layne and Stephan James as Tish and Fonny, teen sweethearts who are ripped apart when Fonny is falsely accused of rape by a racist cop.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

A guy who stands up to your father is such a turn-on. This is exactly what Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze, does for his more-than-a-summer-fling fling, Baby, who is, of course, Jennifer Grey. Soul music, naughty dance numbers, cabin lovemaking—it has everything a good Bible Belt movie needs. Watch Now

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

If violent delights have violent ends, then romantic delights so too have romantic ends. And only Baz Luhrmann can take the two ends of that spectrum and connect them in the middle to form a bloody heart. That’s exactly what the visionary director does with his swoon-worthy 1996 adaptation of the Shakespeare essential, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Watch Now

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

One very necessary ingredient in a successful love story? Passion. And the passion simmering beneath the surface of Céline Sciamma’s award-winning romance is just begging to ignite. A meditation on liberation through art, Portrait ’s narrative unfurls between a Brittany artist and the alluring bride-to-be she’s been tasked with painting. It’s very: Observe, but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t feel.

Loving (2016)

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga team up to play real-life couple Richard and Mildred Loving in this Jeff Nichols biopic, about an interracial couple whose marriage would be the catalyst for changing miscegenation laws when their case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Watch Now

Carol (2015)

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara bring Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt , to gorgeous life as Carol, a woman confined in a loveless marriage, and Therese, the department store clerk who sets her free. Passion, forbidden romance, heartbreaking odds—the stage is set in this Todd Haynes gem. Watch Now

Desire (1936)

Moonlight (2016)

A triptych narrative told over several decades, Moonlight is many things: It’s soaring, it’s heartbreaking, it’s undeniably romantic. Though the protagonist’s road to the end of the reel is paved in adversity, and identity and sexual confusion, Barry Jenkins’s Chiron does experience love and romance. And when he does, it’s so moving, you’re going to want tissues within reach.

Once (2006)

Most romantically-tuned films spend 90 minutes or so convincing us why its leading man and woman shouldn’t be together. John Carney’s musical snack uses its reel convincing us the pair—an unnamed busker and a married immigrant—should never part. Watch Now

DeAnna Janes is a freelance writer and editor for a number of sites, including Harper’s BAZAAR, Tasting Table, Fast Company and Brit + Co, and is a passionate supporter of animal causes, copy savant, movie dork and reckless connoisseur of all holidays. A native Texan living in NYC since 2005, Janes has a degree in journalism from Texas A&M and  got her start in media at US Weekly before moving on to O Magazine, and eventually becoming the entertainment editor of the once-loved, now-shuttered DailyCandy. She’s based on the Upper West Side.

Film, TV & Theatre

See Lady Gaga in the “Joker: Folie à Deux” Trailer

The 48 Best Shows on Hulu

Why Pop Culture Keeps Falling for the “Gay Liar”

How “Mary & George” Makes Jacobean Fashion Sexy

Logan Lerman Doesn’t Really Think About Fame

What We Know About A Complete Unkown

Chloë Sevigny on Being a Generational Muse

Everything to Know About Beetlejuice 2

The 20 Best Easter Movies for the Whole Family

Julio Torres & Tilda Swinton: The Duo We Deserve

75 Essential Feminist Movies You Need to See

The 20 Best Romance Movies of All Time, Ranked According to IMDb 

Films perfect for a date night.

A romantic film is one that tugs at viewers' heartstrings and makes them feel and experience the things that they wish were in their own lives. Sometimes they remind audiences of the amazing relationships they have had and help us to hold a little tighter to the ones that fans still have in their lives right now.

Thanks to users on IMDb , it's easy to determine the films that top the list of the all-time, most romantic movies to have ever been made. The top 10 romantic movies, in particular, each have an amazing story to tell and do so with masterful grace that shows how truly wonderful love can be. They remind viewers of the importance of cherishing the ones they love, no matter who or what they may be.

20 'Beauty and the Beast' (1991)

Imdb rating: 8.0/10.

A beloved rewatchable Disney animated masterpiece , 1991's Beauty and the Beast tells the story of Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara ), an intelligent and spirited young woman who finds herself in an enchanted castle as a prisoner in exchange for her father's freedom. Her captor is the Beast ( Robby Benson ), a prince cursed to remain in his monstrous form until he learns to love and be loved in return. During her stay in the magical castle, Belle learns that not all is as it seems, with the Beast having a tragic story behind his tough exterior.

This classic tale of Beauty and the Beast with its captivating love story is a visual delight that tells a fantastical story of unexpected romance. Its stunning animation, coupled with Alan Menken 's timeless musical score and iconic characters like the lovable Lumière ( Jerry Orbach ) and the stern but caring Cogsworth ( David Ogden Stiers ) all create a gorgeous and endlessly rewatchable Disney classic that's still adored by fans today.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

*Availability in US

Not available

19 'Her' (2013)

Director Spike Jonze 's Her is an award-winning film that takes place in a not-so-distant future where technology has progressed far enough that artificial intelligence sounds human-like – sound familiar? In that future, Theodore Twombly ( Joaquin Phoenix ), a lonely and introverted writer, finds solace and love in an unlikely place: an operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson ).

The unconventional romance that unfolds between the two leads is surprisingly a poignant depiction of love in the modern age, or rather the desperation for connection individuals feel in a world dominated by isolation. Phoenix delivers a mesmerizing performance as the vulnerable Theodore, which is perfectly complemented by Johansson's voice acting , which imbues Samantha with a warmth and charm that make it easy to see why someone could fall for AI.

Watch on Max

18 'The Princess Bride' (1987)

A timeless classic set in a whimsical fairytale world, Rob Reiner 's The Princess Bride takes viewers on a humorous adventure alongside the heroic Westley ( Cary Elwes ), who is on a quest to rescue his true love, Princess Buttercup ( Robin Wright ), from an arranged marriage to the nefarious Prince Humperdinck ( Chris Sarandon ).

The quotable film cleverly subverts traditional fairytale tropes through Westley's hilarious journey , where he also meets comical yet unforgettable characters like Inigo Montoya ( Mandy Patinkin ) and Vizzini ( Wallace Shawn ). The Princess Bride is the perfect movie , earning that rare reputation for its seamless combination of an exciting quest, humor, and romance. Of course, the chemistry between Elwes and Wright lends a genuine and enduring charm to their characters' love story, which has stood the test of time.

The Princess Bride

Watch on Disney+

17 'La La Land' (2016)

La La Land is a musical masterpiece that pays homage to Hollywood's golden age but adds a modern twist. It's centered on the different stages of the romance between aspiring actress Mia ( Emma Stone ) and jazz musician Sebastian ( Ryan Gosling ), who go through the highs and lows of pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles as best they can. As they inch closer to their goals, however, they realize that they are on entirely different paths and must soon make a tough decision.

With elaborate set pieces and a vibrant color palette, director Damien Chazelle 's La La Land tells its heartbreaking love story against a gorgeous backdrop. Not to mention, the film's songs like "City of Stars" likely have a permanent place in fans' playlists, reminding them of the breakup film's emotional message about what people would do for love (and what they wouldn't).

16 'Three Colors: Red' (1994)

Imdb rating: 8.1/10.

Directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski as the final installment of the groundbreaking Three Colours trilogy , Three Colors: Red is a mesmerizing finale centered on fraternity. It follows the story of Valentine ( Irène Jacob ), a young model who collides with a dog while driving, an incident that leads to an unexpected friendship with the dog's owner and retired judge, Joseph Kern ( Jean-Louis Trintignant ).

The profound film depicts their heartfelt conversations and the unconventional bond they begin to form despite not having much in common. An exploration of the human experience, Red is the perfect capstone to the trilogy that reflects French Revolutionary ideals . It's certainly for romantics, as it places emphasis on the value of coincidence and fate, but without being heavy-handed. It's subtle in its depiction of the unusual bond, with each rewatch revealing something new in the film's symbolism.

Watch on Criterion

15 'It Happened One Night' (1934)

Based on the 1933 short story, "Night Bus," by Samuel Hopkins Adams , It Happened One Night is a rom-com and screwball comedy centered on the enduring tale of romance between a socialite rebelling against her father, Ellie Andrews ( Claudette Colbert ) and a street-smart reporter, Peter Warne ( Clark Gable ). When they both agree to help each other, a series of comical misadventures leads to true love.

With wit, charm, and sparkling chemistry between Colbert and Gable , it’s easy to see why director Frank Capra’s movie has had an enduring legacy as a genre-defining masterpiece . It's credited with many tropes still commonly used in romantic comedies and inspired countless screwball comedies after it premiered. It Happened One Night was also the first film to win all five major Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing, Adaptation. Its amusing tale may not have aged well in some aspects, but it’s worth watching for those interested in the history of romance films.

It Happened One Night

14 'before sunset' (2004).

The second installment in director Richard Linklater ’s Before trilogy, Before Sunset continues the story of the 1995 film, but this time shows the two main characters meeting in Paris nine years later. Jesse ( Ethan Hawke ) and Céline ( Julie Delpy ) pick up where they left off in Vienna, and realize new things about themselves and what they truly want out of their futures.

With their limited hour together before Jesse’s flight, the film unfolds in what feels like real-time as the duo seamlessly catch up and reconnect. The spark is somehow even brighter than the first movie and highlights the way that fleeting connections bring out people’s most honest parts – so much so that Jessie and Céline’s saga feels like it’s only just begun . There's a reason why the trilogy gained international acclaim, as Hawke and Delpy's off-the-charts chemistry is hard to match.

Before Sunset

13 'in the mood for love' (2000).

In the Mood for Love is a visually stunning and evocative masterpiece by Wong Kar-Wai . Set in 1960s Hong Kong, the film revolves around the lives of Mr. Chow ( Tony Leung ) and Mrs. Chan ( Maggie Cheung ), two neighbors who find solace in their newly formed and somewhat strange bond after discovering that their spouses are having an affair.

The film follows as the two begin to fall for each other, all subtly captured through small gestures and stolen glances. Despite the clear connection, they're bound by societal norms and their own inhibitions. They want what they cannot have, and that tense atmosphere and desperation are perfectly complemented by the stylistic visuals that seem to reflect the characters’ predicaments. It’s a spell-binding film that should be considered essential viewing for fans of Asian cinema and romance in general.

In the Mood For Love

12 'portrait of a lady on fire' (2019).

An instant classic LGBTQ+ romance movie directed by Céline Sciamma , Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a deeply emotional masterpiece set in 18th-century France . It tells the story of a forbidden love affair between Marianne ( Noémie Merlant ), a painter, and Héloïse ( Adèle Haenel ), her initially reluctant subject. Although Héloïse is about to be married off to a man she has never met, the connection between the two women deepens as they spend more time together on a remote island.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire 's slow-burning romance is portrayed with authenticity and full of tension viewers can feel through the screen. Sciamma's direction is masterful, capturing the unspoken desires and emotions that simmer beneath the surface. Merlant and Haenel have an electric chemistry that proves they were impeccable cast for the movie. A meditation on love, art, and the nature of desire, it's a hauntingly beautiful film that any fan of the genre should see at least once.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Watch on Hulu

11 'Before Sunrise' (1995)

Director Richard Linklater's first entry into the iconic Before trilogy , Before Sunrise is a legendary and beloved romance movie that's centered on the love that blossoms after a chance encounter on a train between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy). The two strangers decide to take the leap and learn more about each other during one night in Vienna, doing as much as they can before Jesse's flight out of the country the next morning.

Relying heavily on Hawke and Delpy's performance, Before Sunrise is both character and dialogue-driven , with the duo's conversations capturing the magic of meeting someone special for the first time. The film essentially encapsulates what it's like to fall in love at first sight, and then some. Audiences won't be able to help but root for their fleeting romance as time slowly but surely runs out during their magical evening (which thankfully turns into two more beloved film sequels).

Before Sunrise

10 'the handmaiden' (2016).

A psychological drama, erotic thriller, and romance all at once, The Handmaiden is a genre-busting South Korean film by director Park Chan-wook . Set in the 1930s, the film depicts the bizarre experiences of the young Sook-hee ( Kim Tae-ri ), whose new role as a worker for the wealthy Japanese heiress Lady Hideko ( Kim Min-hee ) takes a dark turn.

Weaving together a tale of deception and unexpected romance and alliance, the film depicts the twisty romance that forms between Sook-hee and the heiress (who she was supposed to swindle out of part of her fortune). It effortlessly combines dark humor and sexuality, with its tantalizing story set against a visually exquisite backdrop. The movie’s multi-layered narrative can keep audiences guessing until its impactful yet understandably divisive ending.

The Handmaiden

Watch on Amazon Prime

9 'Gone with the Wind' (1939)

Imdb rating: 8.2/10.

Based on the renowned eponymous novel by Margaret Mitchell , Gone with the Wind is an epic historical romance film that revolves around the life and relationships of Scarlett O'Hara ( Vivien Leigh ). The strong-willed character's story unfolds as she pursues Ashley Wilkes ( Leslie Howard ), but ends up marrying Rhett Butler ( Clark Gable ).

With its grand setting and epic story, the film has stood the test of time and is widely recognized as one of the greatest romance movies ever made . It's also one of Gable's most important roles, despite the notoriously messy production it took to create the historically significant film. It's worth noting that many of its aspects, most importantly the glorification of slavery, have not aged well. This complicated background doesn't change its mark on cinematic history, though, as it is still undeniably a sweeping epic that tells a romantic tale.

Gone With the Wind

8 'the apartment' (1960), imdb rating: 8.3/10.

Director Billy Wilder 's The Apartment is a critically-acclaimed rom-com that follows the unusual romance that forms between C.C. "Bud" Baxter ( Jack Lemmon ) and Fran Kubelik ( Shirley MacLaine ). Bud is an insurance clerk with an interesting method for career advancement – he lends his apartment to his bosses for their extramarital affairs. When he falls for the elevator operator, Fran, things become complicated when he learns she's involved with his married boss.

Witty, funny, and undeniably bold for its time, The Apartment depicted the messiness and complications around romantic relationships that aren't always seen on the big screen. As Bud and Fran negotiate their roles and places in each other's lives, the palpable tension starts to build, making it easy to root for them. The fantastic chemistry between these two leads also makes it easy to feel invested in their atypical romance, which is now remembered for being among the best from that decade.

Watch on Fubo

7 'Singin' in the Rain' (1952)

Set in Hollywood during the 1920s, Singin' in the Rain tells the story of Don Lockwood ( Gene Kelly ), who finds himself (alongside his co-stars) having a challenging time transitioning to "talkies" after the end of the silent film era. Along the way, he falls in love with the aspiring actor Kathy Selden ( Debbie Reynolds ), whose road to stardom comes at the perfect time.

Known for its elaborate musical numbers, light-hearted story, and top-notch performances, Singin' in the Rain is fondly remembered as one of the films that defined the musical genre . Don and Kathy's will-they-won't-they dynamic also elevates the film to its legendary status that it still enjoys today. Despite premiering over 70 years ago, the 1952 movie is still wonderful to see for the first time today, especially for younger audiences who aren't too familiar with the history of silent films.

Singin' in the Rain

6 'amélie' (2001).

In such a beautiful display of lights and colors, Amélie broke into fans' hearts in 2001 and made such a lasting impression, quickly becoming one of the best romantic movies around the globe. The film follows the titular character, who has love and zeal for life as she strives to bring joy and happiness to all those around her. Despite her positive interactions with others, the protagonist has trouble meeting her own needs and wants due to a complicated past.

Ultimately, Amélie is a heartwarming romantic comedy , as after the protagonist works to get others together and bring them love, she finds her own. The film’s journey with Amélie is such a beautiful one, and a clear reason why this film would be recognized as one of the greatest romances – it is a showcase of beautiful, selfless love.

Rent on Apple TV

5 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a beloved classic that demonstrates the lengths people will go to find the love of their life. The leads in this film are played expertly by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet , who both get memories of their relationship erased after a painful breakup. They soon question this decision in the non-linear story.

It is an emotional rollercoaster as fans watch the ups and downs of their love as it blossoms, fades, and is reignited in the most fascinating ways. It is heartbreakingly beautiful to watch this journey they take as they endeavor to find peace and strength and joy despite insurmountable circumstances. One of the greatest things about this film is that it shows that love is not always picture-perfect, and that is okay. Here's to hoping the upcoming Eternal Sunshine TV series does this incredible film justice.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

4 'your name' (2016), imdb rating: 8.4/10.

In Your Name , viewers see the two main characters, a high school boy and girl, as they repeatedly swap bodies throughout the gorgeous romantic animated film and learn to live each other's lives. While this understandably starts out as a confusing and scary experience, it soon turns into one that's mutually beneficial as they improve each other's lives in small but meaningful ways. This beautiful confusion ultimately leads to their perfect union in the end.

What is likely one of the most creative and original storylines in recent history, Your Name is one of the best anime movies that really takes the idea of love and romance to an entirely new level as it allows each to walk in the other’s shoes, which then helps them to know and understand each other that much more. Truly beautiful.

Your Name (2016)

3 'modern times' (1936), imdb rating: 8.5/10.

Charlie Chaplin was not necessarily known as a romance actor, but there are a few of his films that do fall into that genre. Modern Times is one of those. In a film that involves a half dozen arrests and escapes and other wacky hijinks, there is a beautifully innocent romance interspersed within.

Modern Times follows The Tramp ( Chaplin’s most known character ) as he is fired from several jobs, jailed, misunderstood, jailed some more, and so on. Eventually, he meets another vagabond named Ellen ( Paulette Goddard , Chaplin's future wife), and after several more chance meetings, the two walk into their futures together. What makes their romance from Modern Times enduring is the amazing resilience that the duo form after they meet , with their relationship being the shield they need from whatever the world throws at them.

2 'City Lights' (1931)

In the era of silent films, ideas and themes are conveyed through action, not speech. So, for the romance to come through in this film, there had to be a great deal of body language used to convey the love and appreciation that “talkies” could do with words. In what is likely one of Charlie Chaplin ’s greatest performances , City Lights shines brightly as a love story that breaks down all barriers and finishes with a genuine smile.

In it, a persistent protagonist (played by Chaplin) falls for a blind flower girl ( Virginia Cherrill ). After the tramp learns of her financial misfortunes, he makes it his mission to help her with her troubles. Audiences today will find this black-and-white movie as endearing and sweet as viewers did when it first premiered, proving that it's still among the best romances ever put to the big screen.

1 'Casablanca' (1942)

If you choose to never watch this movie, you will regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. Humphrey Bogart said these words (or at least very similar ones) to Ingrid Bergman in the legendary film, Casablanca , and those words alone, along with the amazing entirety of the film, continue to influence and inspire both filmmakers and fans today. The film follows nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Bogart) who encounters his old flame (played by Bergman) alongside her husband, Victor Laszlo ( Paul Henreid ), a rebel on the run from Germans.

Never excluded from any discussion of the top ten romance movies from Hollywood, Casablanca 's love story and legacy have definitely stood the test of time , as eighty years later, it still stands as a wonderful film. When it was released, it received several awards, including Outstanding Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It is definitely a movie worth watching and a love story worth embracing wholeheartedly.

NEXT: The Best Romantic Movies on Hulu Right Now

20 Best Romantic Movies On Amazon Prime [December 2023]

An Amazon Prime membership is a beautiful thing. Movie-lovers everywhere appreciate Prime Video's vast library of titles, which includes everything from terrifying thrillers to warm-hearted family films. However, Romance fans are especially spoiled by Prime's offerings. Love stories of every stripe are available — from feel-good stories to heart-breaking tear-jerkers, from indie tales to mesmerizing epics — and they've got amorous offerings from all corners of the globe. We've searched through Amazon Prime's enormous collection of films and gathered the 20 best romantic movies on this list. Whether you're a fan of far-fetched rom-coms or prefer your romance with a side of drama, there's a title for everyone. Happy watching!

Updated on November 30, 2023 : Amazon Prime offers an ever-changing array of movies, with new love stories constantly being added and subtracted. Make sure to check back every month, as we update this list to reflect the streaming service's current library of romantic movies.

An American in Paris

A vivacious, colorful, optimistic movie about life after war, "An American in Paris" follows Jerry (Gene Kelly), an American soldier who stays in Paris after World War II concludes to try his hand at painting. Struggling mightily, he arouses the interest of wealthy American heiress Milo (Nina Foch), who agrees to be his benefactor. She's falling hard for Jerry, but at the same time, he's taken with a captivating French lady named Lise (Leslie Caron). But Jerry's friend Henri (Georges Guétary), who supported Lise during the war, is in love with her and wants to whisk her away to America. "An American in Paris" deftly combines dance, music, romance, and a look at the economic and social realities of post-war Europe.

• Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant
• Director: Vincente Minnelli
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Anything's Possible

Love and romance just seem to hit hardest when they come as a surprise, when one isn't looking — or at least that's the magical notion that fuels plenty of romantic comedy movies. It's also one of the big ideas behind "Anything's Possible," a cute and affecting rom-com about two teenagers who delicately fall for each other during an already chaotic senior year and when one of them is in the middle of a profound and important identity transformation. Cool teen guy Khal develops a crush on the charming and self-assured Kelsa, who has just transitioned. They decide to go for it, despite the potential hardships of young love and the scandal their relationship may create at their school.

• Starring: Eva Reign, Abubakr Ali, Renee Elise Goldsberry
• Director: Billy Porter
• Runtime: 96 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

The Big Sick

Kumail, an up-and-coming comedian struggling to make a name for himself, embarks upon a relationship with Emily Gardner, a psychology student. Things get complicated when Emily ends up in a coma, due to an increasingly serious infection. When Kumail's parents learn about their relationship, the situation becomes even more snarled. Loosely based on a true story, "The Big Sick" is sad, funny, and dramatic. This all adds up to a refreshing take on the genre.

• Starring: Kumail Nanjiani , Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter
• Director: Michael Showalter
• Runtime: 119 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

"Bros" reinvents the romantic comedy while lovingly embodying those films' tropes, injecting new life into the genre and not just because it's one of the first major studio rom-coms to feature a same-sex couple. "Bros" features emotionally complicated characters who are a little afraid of relationships and not necessarily looking for true love. Screenwriter Billy Eichner plays a podcaster happy with a series of meaningless flings until he meets Aaron, a lawyer with a similar mindset about commitment. Before long, however, they like each other so much they just can't help but let their guards down and inadvertently let love just happen.

• Starring: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Monica Raymund
• Director: Nicholas Stoller
• Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

"Charade" is part romance, part comedy, and part suspense, and sticks the landing in all three genres. We follow Regina Lampert and Peter Joshua, who spark a romantic relationship on an Alpine vacation. Yet when Regina returns from her ski trip, she discovers her husband has been murdered. She and Joshua must unravel the mystery, which grows more and more intense. If you like your romance films infused with mystique, then this is, without a doubt, the movie for you.

• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Walter Matthau
• Director: Stanley Donen
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

A low-key romantic comedy, "Forev" explores the pros and cons of marriage through a very unique lens. Sophie and Pete are new neighbors and quick friends. When he embarks on a long drive to pick up his sister from college, she tags along. As a joke, they decide to get engaged, as marriage offers tax breaks, better insurance, and companionship. They really don't see much of a downside — until they get stranded in the desert. This awkward situation forces them to look inward to determine if they even want to be in such a permanent arrangement, and what they want out of life itself.

• Starring: Noel Wells, Matt Mider, Amanda Bauer
• Directors: Molly Green, James Leffler
• Runtime: 88 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71% (Audience Score)

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Wedding season is a beautiful time when love and celebration fill the air. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" portrays things a little differently, however.  Like the title suggests, it revolves around a man named Charles who goes to four weddings and a funeral. The kicker? At each event, he encounters a woman named Carrie, who he comes to love. If you're a fan of nuptials, or romance films with a plethora of comedic elements, then "Four Weddings and a Funeral" is an ideal option.

• Starring: Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, James Fleet
• Director: Mike Newell
• Runtime: 117 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

The Handmaiden

As an erotic psychological thriller, this movie throws a lot at its audience — but it's always delivered in exactly the right way. Sook-hee is the titular handmaiden, in service to a Japanese heiress named Lady Hideko. In truth, Sook-hee is after Hideko's fortune, and is operating with the help of a con man. Yet Hideko is hiding complex secrets of her own. Things become even more complicated when Sook-hee and Hideko develop feelings for each other. This isn't your typical romance film, and that's what makes it so exceptional.

• Starring: Kim Min-hee, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong
• Director: Park Chan-wook
• Runtime: 144 minutes

"Heathers" follows teen queen Veronica and her boyfriend J.D. as they team up to take down the popular kids. This is somewhat ironic, as she's also part of the top clique. But Veronica and J.D., and "Heathers" as a whole, are all about digging into the rot at the center of the high school hierarchy — a process that quickly turns deadly. Though cynical, "Heathers" glides over its darkest moments with smart, pitch-black comedy. It might have a cult following, but fans of mainstream romance won't be disappointed.

• Starring: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
• Director: Michael Lehmann
• Runtime: 103 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

I Want You Back

"I Want You Back" follows two strangers, Peter and Emma, who meet in a rather unique way: Peter hears Emma crying. They discover that they've both recently been broken up with, so they devise a plan to reach out to each other when they're feeling down. But they also take it a step further by attempting to break up their exes, who have both entered new relationships with separate people. "I Want You Back" explores the eternal fact that love will make people do wild things –– and that it arrives when you least expect it.

• Starring: Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Scott Eastwood
• Director: Jason Orley
• Runtime: 111 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

The Lost City

The story becomes reality for novelist Loretta Sage in "The Lost City," a romantic adventure that unfolds over a treasure hunt deep within the jungle, complete with a wacky but evil villain in pursuit. Loretta is a popular adventure novelist who keeps to herself, turning her deceased husband's travel stories into novels adorned with images of a hunky cover model named Alan. While Loretta and Alan are out promoting their latest work on a book tour, weird billionaire Abigail Fairfax kidnaps them in hopes that they can lead him to the fabled Lost City of D. Loretta is brainy and cranky; Alan is goofy, sweet, and dumb, and they just might fall in love if they can get out of the jungle alive.

• Starring: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe
• Director: Adam Nee and Aaron Nee
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Love and Friendship

"Love and Friendship" follows Lady Susan, a recent widow with little money of her own. As it's the 1790s and she has a so-so reputation, she has few options. Nevertheless, she draws up a plan to revive her fortunes: She and her daughter will both marry up. Does love conquer all? You'll have to watch to find out. Anyone who loves comedy, romance, and period pieces is bound to enjoy this unique Jane Austen adaptation.

• Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel
• Director: Whit Stillman
• Runtime: 93 minutes

Notting Hill

Two titans of the light and frothy rom-com genre — Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant — combine forces in "Notting Hill," a gentle movie about how love conquers all. William, a bored London bookshop owner, falls in love virtually at first sight with Anna, an American movie star who pops into his store. They're inevitably drawn to each other, particularly after a magical kiss. Though they endeavor to keep their romance secret or at least take things slow, they encounter resistance from their various associates who don't think true love can happen between a lowly shopkeeper and a jet-set celebrity.

• Starring: Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Hugh Bonneville
• Director: Roger Michell
• Runtime: 123 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

Red, White & Royal Blue

An Amazon Prime original, "Red, White & Royal Blue" brings Casey McQuiston's top-selling romance novel to the small screen. Mixing international politics and royal intrigue with the slow build of an unlikely love story, this film shows how romance can quell an international incident. Alex Claremont-Diaz is the son of U.S. president Ellen Claremont. Prince Henry is an heir to the English throne. They absolutely loathe each other, to the point where their respective parents force them to call off their feud. But the time they spend together makes them realize their strong feelings for each other might skew more towards love than hate.

• Starring: Taylor Zakhar Perez, Nicholas Galitzine, Uma Thurman
• Director: Matthew Lopez
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

The Shape of Water - Frevee

Monster-movie maverick Guillermo del Toro expressed his sensitive and romantic side with "The Shape of Water" and wound up winning the Academy Award for best picture . It's a play on the "Romeo and Juliet" formula of two characters from opposite backgrounds who find true love in the face of much opposition, although the romantics in this movie are Elisa — a lonely, mute cleaner who works in a secret government laboratory in the early 1960s — and a scaly amphibious sea monster who resides in the facility. The duo forges a powerful and profound connection that will change both of their lives, should they be able to work around nasty federal operatives.

• Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins
• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Sylvie's Love

"Sylvie's Love" is a romance fan's romance movie. It follows a saxophonist named Robert and a woman named Sylvie, who develops a burning passion for her career in television — something not everyone is happy about, given the fact that it's 1962. The two fall head-over-heels for each other, but commitments, work, and a remarkable offer to play in Paris get in the way. Sylvie and Robert's story splits, reconnects, and branches in a number of fascinating ways. Love is complicated here, but it is also enduring.

• Starring: Tessa Thompson , Nnamdi Asomugha, Eva Longoria
• Director: Eugene Ashe
• Runtime: 114 minutes

Three Thousand Years of Longing

An epic romance that spans millennia, "Three Thousand Years of Longing" takes as realistic and empathetic an approach as possible to the idea of a genie in a magic lamp. The agony and loneliness he feels at being trapped for so long are very real, but the exterior world exacts its own toll. He reveals his many heartbreaking experiences to narrative scholar Alithea, who discovers his ancient vessel in Turkey. Could he find a happy, if touchingly imperfect, ending this time?

• Starring:   Idris Elba , Tilda Swinton, Aamito Lagum
• Director:  George Miller
• Year:  2022
• Runtime:  108 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score:  71%

To Catch a Thief

John Robie is a retired jewel thief living out his days on the French Riviera. When crimes that have his name written all over them start occurring, police come knocking. John isn't to blame, however, and attempts to clear his name by solving the mystery. Along the way, he starts a relationship with Frances, an American tourist. When her high-priced jewelry is stolen, their burgeoning bond takes a hit — yet that doesn't stop John from, as the title suggests, continuing on his quest to catch the thief.

• Starring: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Runtime: 106 minutes

Untamed Heart - Freevee

"Untamed Heart" explores to its fullest extent the metaphorical idea that the blood-pumping organ is also the place where feelings of love reside. The result is a heart-swelling and heartbreaking romance. 

After a string of unfaithful and unreliable boyfriends, diner worker Caroline doesn't even notice busboy Adam gazing adoringly at her until he rescues her from a street assault. He's severely injured in the melee, and while hospitalized, he learns that he has a likely fatal and rare heart condition. But when approached about a transplant, Adam refuses, swearing that his doomed heart is where his love for Caroline resides. A quick but profound romance ensues, from which no one will emerge without some kind of heart damage.

• Starring: Christian Slater , Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez
• Director: Tony Bill
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 58%

Who You Think I Am

"Who You Think I Am" follows a woman who connects with a man on a social media platform. Sounds normal enough, right? The problem is, she's a middle-aged adult who portrays herself online as a 20-something. This quickly go from bad to worse as her secret unravels. This French film has a bit of everything, from thriller-esque twists to stirring passion. It's a romance unlike any other, and a drama you'll never forget.

• Starring: Juliette Binoche, François Civil, Nicole Garcia
• Director: Safy Nebbou
• Runtime: 101 minutes

‘The Greatest Hits’: Save your time

A time-travel romance falls victim to generic characters and clunky dialogue.

You know how a pop song from a moment in your past can bring that moment back to life in colors, smells, memories and emotions? “The Greatest Hits” takes that idea and literalizes it right into the ground.

The film is one of those romantic fantasies that enlists time travel as the primary obstacle keeping two people from getting together. Make that one of the obstacles; the others in “The Greatest Hits” are the heroine’s growing collection of vinyl records and her habit of wearing noise-canceling headphones wherever she goes. The course of true love never did run smooth.

Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is mourning the loss of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) in a car crash that also delivered a bonk to her noggin that allows her to whoosh back in time — but only when she hears a song that triggers a moment the couple had together. Thus the headphones; otherwise, the tunes streaming from supermarket speakers and other people’s car radios would have her constantly yo-yoing back and forth between then and now. The records she’s obsessively collecting are an effort to find the one song that might give her a chance to alter events and keep Max alive.

Does any of this make sense? Of course not. Time-travel romantic fantasy movies never make sense, and when they’re done right, that’s the source of their idiot charm. 2006’s “The Lake House,” which involves Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock and a magic mailbox, is a personal gold standard in this regard.

Complicating matters is that Harriet has met a cute guy at a grief counseling support group — that sentence alone announces we’re in Los Angeles — and is hesitant to open up and tell him about the whole trying-to-change-the-flow-of-history thing. David, who has lost both parents to either separate illnesses or just plain carelessness, is played by Justin H. Min, a likable actor who was the sensitive android of the little-seen “After Yang” (2022), a movie that you would be strongly advised to watch instead of this one.

What would it take to make “The Greatest Hits” work? For one thing, a music-rights budget that allowed for songs an average filmgoer might recognize, rather than tracks from the back 40 of Spotify or a disco remix of Roxy Music’s “To Turn You On.” For another, a script that avoids dialogue clunkers like “There’s a reason that in some languages, the word for love and the word for suffering is the same.” (I Googled it — didn’t find any.) Shopworn supporting stereotypes like the heroine’s sassy gay Black friend (Austin Crute) don’t help.

The prime offender, though, is writer-director Ned Benson’s inability to create three-dimensional characters, or even believable two-dimensional ones. Harriet is apparently a record producer, but we only know that from one dated reference to Alan Parsons and a brief scene of her telling singer Nelly Furtado to “add a little more compression on the drums”; otherwise, she’s an attractive blank space that Boynton strains too hard to fill in. The dead boyfriend, Max, is even more generic — a genial himbo with all the flavor of a catalogue model.

Benson made a stir with his debut, a three-film project called “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” (2014) that looked at a relationship from his, her and their points of view. His belated follow-up, by contrast, has barely enough personality for one. But he gets points for including the dreadful Kars4Kids jingle as one of the audio jogs that sends Harriet tumbling back in time — for a brief moment, the rest of “The Greatest Hits” seems much less irritating in comparison.

PG-13. Streaming on Hulu. Drug use, strong language and suggestive material. 94 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com .

• Italy’s ‘La Chimera’ unearths a fable of lost love and grave robbing 3 hours ago Italy’s ‘La Chimera’ unearths a fable of lost love and grave robbing 3 hours ago
• ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’: A messy look at class divisions in Macedonia April 11, 2024 ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’: A messy look at class divisions in Macedonia April 11, 2024
• ‘The Greatest Hits’: Save your time April 11, 2024 ‘The Greatest Hits’: Save your time April 11, 2024

• Copy from this list
• Report this list

100 best romantic comedy movies

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. Our Family Wedding (2010)

PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy, Romance

The weeks leading up to a young couple's wedding are comic and stressful, especially as their respective fathers try to lay their long standing feud to rest.

Director: Rick Famuyiwa | Stars: America Ferrera , Forest Whitaker , Carlos Mencia , Regina King

Votes: 7,478 | Gross: $20.25M

2. Valentine's Day (I) (2010)

PG-13 | 125 min | Comedy, Romance

Intertwining couples and singles in Los Angeles break-up and make-up based on the pressures and expectations of Valentine's Day.

Director: Garry Marshall | Stars: Julia Roberts , Jamie Foxx , Anne Hathaway , Jessica Alba

Votes: 125,312 | Gross: $110.49M

3. Serendipity (2001)

PG-13 | 90 min | Comedy, Romance

A couple search for each other years after the night they first met, fell in love, and separated, convinced that one day they'd end up together.

Director: Peter Chelsom | Stars: John Cusack , Kate Beckinsale , Jeremy Piven , Bridget Moynahan

Votes: 121,198 | Gross: $50.29M

4. He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

PG-13 | 129 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

This Baltimore-set movie of interconnecting story arcs deals with the challenges of reading or misreading human behavior.

Director: Ken Kwapis | Stars: Ginnifer Goodwin , Jennifer Aniston , Jennifer Connelly , Morgan Lily

Votes: 182,058 | Gross: $93.95M

5. The Bounty Hunter (I) (2010)

PG-13 | 110 min | Action, Comedy, Romance

A bounty hunter learns that his next target is his ex-wife, a reporter working on a murder cover-up. Soon after their reunion, the always-at-odds duo find themselves on a run-for-their-lives adventure.

Director: Andy Tennant | Stars: Jennifer Aniston , Gerard Butler , Gio Perez , Joel Marsh Garland

Votes: 134,264 | Gross: $67.06M

6. The Wedding Singer (1998)

PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Music, Romance

Robbie, a singer, and Julia, a waitress, are both engaged, but to the wrong people. Fortune intervenes to help them discover each other.

Director: Frank Coraci | Stars: Adam Sandler , Drew Barrymore , Christine Taylor , Allen Covert

Votes: 162,069 | Gross: $80.25M

7. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

R | 95 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Harry and Sally have known each other for years, and are very good friends, but they fear sex would ruin the friendship.

Director: Rob Reiner | Stars: Billy Crystal , Meg Ryan , Carrie Fisher , Bruno Kirby

Votes: 242,165 | Gross: $92.82M

8. Pretty Woman (1990)

R | 119 min | Comedy, Romance

A man in a legal but hurtful business needs an escort for some social events, and hires a beautiful prostitute he meets... only to fall in love.

Director: Garry Marshall | Stars: Richard Gere , Julia Roberts , Jason Alexander , Laura San Giacomo

Votes: 361,158 | Gross: $178.41M

9. The Wedding Planner (2001)

Mary Fiore is San Francisco's most successful supplier of romance and glamor. She knows all the tricks. She knows all the rules. But then she breaks the most important rule of all: she falls in love with the groom.

Director: Adam Shankman | Stars: Jennifer Lopez , Matthew McConaughey , Bridgette Wilson-Sampras , Justin Chambers

Votes: 86,421 | Gross: $60.40M

10. She's All That (1999)

PG-13 | 95 min | Comedy, Romance

A high school jock makes a bet that he can turn an unattractive girl into the school's prom queen.

Director: Robert Iscove | Stars: Freddie Prinze Jr. , Rachael Leigh Cook , Matthew Lillard , Paul Walker

Votes: 103,648 | Gross: $63.37M

11. Never Been Kissed (1999)

PG-13 | 107 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A newspaper reporter enrolls in high school as part of research for a story.

Director: Raja Gosnell | Stars: Drew Barrymore , David Arquette , Michael Vartan , Molly Shannon

Votes: 97,420 | Gross: $55.47M

12. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A high-school boy, Cameron, cannot date Bianca until her anti-social older sister, Kat, has a boyfriend. So, Cameron pays a mysterious boy, Patrick, to charm Kat.

Director: Gil Junger | Stars: Heath Ledger , Julia Stiles , Joseph Gordon-Levitt , Larisa Oleynik

Votes: 383,926 | Gross: $38.18M

13. Music and Lyrics (2007)

PG-13 | 104 min | Comedy, Music, Romance

A washed up singer is given a couple days to compose a chart-topping hit for an aspiring teen sensation. Though he's never written a decent lyric in his life, he sparks with an offbeat younger woman with a flair for words.

Director: Marc Lawrence | Stars: Hugh Grant , Drew Barrymore , Scott Porter , Nick Bacon

Votes: 107,116 | Gross: $50.57M

14. When in Rome (2010)

PG-13 | 91 min | Comedy, Romance

Beth is an ambitious young New Yorker who is completely unlucky in love. On a whirlwind trip to Rome, she impulsively steals some coins from a reputed fountain of love, and is then aggressively pursued by a band of suitors.

Director: Mark Steven Johnson | Stars: Kristen Bell , Josh Duhamel , Anjelica Huston , Danny DeVito

Votes: 64,559 | Gross: $32.67M

15. Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)

PG | 104 min | Comedy, Romance

A college grad lands a job as a financial journalist in New York City to support where she nurtures her shopping addiction and falls for a wealthy entrepreneur.

Director: P.J. Hogan | Stars: Isla Fisher , Hugh Dancy , Krysten Ritter , Joan Cusack

Votes: 83,022 | Gross: $44.28M

16. Knocked Up (2007)

R | 129 min | Comedy, Romance

For fun-loving party animal Ben Stone, the last thing he ever expected was for his one-night stand to show up on his doorstep eight weeks later to tell him she's pregnant with his child.

Director: Judd Apatow | Stars: Seth Rogen , Katherine Heigl , Paul Rudd , Leslie Mann

Votes: 384,074 | Gross: $148.73M

17. No Strings Attached (I) (2011)

R | 108 min | Comedy, Romance

A guy and girl try to keep their relationship strictly physical, but it's not long before they learn that they want something more.

Director: Ivan Reitman | Stars: Natalie Portman , Ashton Kutcher , Kevin Kline , Cary Elwes

Votes: 243,745 | Gross: $70.66M

18. The Proposal (I) (2009)

PG-13 | 108 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada.

Director: Anne Fletcher | Stars: Sandra Bullock , Ryan Reynolds , Mary Steenburgen , Craig T. Nelson

Votes: 359,517 | Gross: $163.96M

19. Sex and the City (2008)

R | 145 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A New York City writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.

Director: Michael Patrick King | Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker , Kim Cattrall , Cynthia Nixon , Kristin Davis

Votes: 127,128 | Gross: $152.65M

20. Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

PG-13 | 108 min | Comedy, Romance

A young woman who has reinvented herself as a New York City socialite must return home to Alabama to obtain a divorce from her husband after seven years of separation.

Director: Andy Tennant | Stars: Reese Witherspoon , Patrick Dempsey , Josh Lucas , Candice Bergen

Votes: 123,383 | Gross: $127.22M

21. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)

PG-13 | 116 min | Comedy, Romance

Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive and ladies' man who, to win a big campaign, bets that he can make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days.

Director: Donald Petrie | Stars: Kate Hudson , Matthew McConaughey , Adam Goldberg , Kathryn Hahn

Votes: 269,307 | Gross: $105.81M

22. The Break-Up (2006)

PG-13 | 106 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A couple's break-up proceeds to get uglier and nastier by the moment as each tries to keep their luxurious condo from the other.

Director: Peyton Reed | Stars: Jennifer Aniston , Vince Vaughn , Jon Favreau , Joey Lauren Adams

Votes: 138,833 | Gross: $118.70M

23. Sex and the City 2 (2010)

R | 146 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

While wrestling with the pressures of life, love, and work in Manhattan, Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte join Samantha for a trip to Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), where Samantha's ex is filming a new movie.

Director: Michael Patrick King | Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker , Kim Cattrall , Kristin Davis , Cynthia Nixon

Votes: 83,936 | Gross: $95.35M

24. Maid in Manhattan (2002)

PG-13 | 105 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A Senatorial candidate falls for a hotel maid, thinking she is a socialite, when he sees her trying on a wealthy woman's dress.

Director: Wayne Wang | Stars: Jennifer Lopez , Ralph Fiennes , Natasha Richardson , Stanley Tucci

Votes: 96,052 | Gross: $94.01M

25. What Happens in Vegas (2008)

PG-13 | 99 min | Comedy, Romance

A man and a woman are compelled, for legal reasons, to live life as a couple for a limited period of time. At stake is a large amount of money.

Director: Tom Vaughan | Stars: Cameron Diaz , Ashton Kutcher , Rob Corddry , Lake Bell

Votes: 187,649 | Gross: $80.28M

26. 27 Dresses (2008)

PG-13 | 111 min | Comedy, Romance

After serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, a young woman wrestles with the idea of standing by her sister's side as her sibling marries the man she's secretly in love with.

Director: Anne Fletcher | Stars: Katherine Heigl , James Marsden , Malin Akerman , Brian Kerwin

Votes: 174,764 | Gross: $76.81M

27. Leap Year (2010)

PG | 100 min | Comedy, Romance

Anna Brady plans to travel to Dublin, Ireland to propose to her boyfriend Jeremy on February 29, leap day, because, according to Irish tradition, a man who receives a marriage proposal on a leap day must accept it.

Director: Anand Tucker | Stars: Amy Adams , Matthew Goode , Adam Scott , John Lithgow

Votes: 110,556 | Gross: $25.92M

28. Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

PG-13 | 102 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

Robin Monroe, a New York magazine editor, and the gruff pilot Quinn Harris must put aside their mutual dislike if they are to survive after crash landing on a deserted South Seas island.

Director: Ivan Reitman | Stars: Harrison Ford , Anne Heche , David Schwimmer , Jacqueline Obradors

Votes: 83,252 | Gross: $74.33M

29. Shallow Hal (2001)

PG-13 | 114 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

A shallow man falls in love with a 300-pound woman because of her inner beauty.

Directors: Bobby Farrelly , Peter Farrelly | Stars: Jack Black , Gwyneth Paltrow , Jason Alexander , Joe Viterelli

Votes: 144,542 | Gross: $70.84M

30. Fool's Gold (I) (2008)

PG-13 | 112 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

A new clue to the whereabouts of a lost treasure rekindles a married couple's sense of adventure -- and their estranged romance.

Director: Andy Tennant | Stars: Matthew McConaughey , Kate Hudson , Donald Sutherland , Alexis Dziena

Votes: 84,396 | Gross: $70.23M

31. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

R | 111 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Devastated Peter takes a Hawaiian vacation in order to deal with the recent break-up with his TV star girlfriend, Sarah. Little does he know, Sarah's traveling to the same resort as her ex - and she's bringing along her new boyfriend.

Director: Nicholas Stoller | Stars: Kristen Bell , Jason Segel , Paul Rudd , Mila Kunis

Votes: 302,100 | Gross: $63.17M

32. Just Go with It (2011)

PG-13 | 117 min | Comedy, Romance

On a weekend trip to Hawaii, a plastic surgeon convinces his loyal assistant to pose as his soon-to-be-divorced wife in order to cover up a careless lie he told to his much-younger girlfriend.

Director: Dennis Dugan | Stars: Adam Sandler , Jennifer Aniston , Brooklyn Decker , Nicole Kidman

Votes: 264,894 | Gross: $103.03M

33. Easy A (2010)

PG-13 | 92 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

When Olive lies to her best friend about losing her virginity to one of the college boys, a girl overhears their conversation. Soon, her story spreads across the entire school like wildfire.

Director: Will Gluck | Stars: Emma Stone , Amanda Bynes , Penn Badgley , Dan Byrd

Votes: 417,203 | Gross: $58.40M

34. Clueless (1995)

PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Romance

Shallow, rich and socially successful Cher is at the top of her Beverly Hills high school's pecking scale. Seeing herself as a matchmaker, Cher first coaxes two teachers into dating each other.

Director: Amy Heckerling | Stars: Alicia Silverstone , Stacey Dash , Brittany Murphy , Paul Rudd

Votes: 245,234 | Gross: $56.63M

35. Life as We Know It (2010)

PG-13 | 114 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Two single adults become caregivers to an orphaned girl when their mutual best friends die in an accident.

Director: Greg Berlanti | Stars: Katherine Heigl , Josh Duhamel , Josh Lucas , Alexis Clagett

Votes: 138,798 | Gross: $53.37M

36. Just Married (2003)

A young newlywed couple honeymoon in Europe, where obstacles challenge their ability to sustain the marriage.

Director: Shawn Levy | Stars: Ashton Kutcher , Brittany Murphy , Christian Kane , David Moscow

Votes: 74,309 | Gross: $56.13M

37. License to Wed (2007)

A reverend puts an engaged couple through a grueling marriage preparation course to see if they are meant to be married in his church.

Director: Ken Kwapis | Stars: Mandy Moore , John Krasinski , Robin Williams , Eric Christian Olsen

Votes: 40,618 | Gross: $43.80M

38. No Reservations (2007)

PG | 104 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

The life of a top chef changes when she becomes the guardian of her young niece.

Director: Scott Hicks | Stars: Catherine Zeta-Jones , Aaron Eckhart , Abigail Breslin , Patricia Clarkson

Votes: 78,661 | Gross: $43.11M

39. Rumor Has It... (2005)

Sarah Huttinger is a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the book and film "The Graduate" -- and that she just might be the offspring of the well-documented event.

Director: Rob Reiner | Stars: Jennifer Aniston , Mark Ruffalo , Shirley MacLaine , Kevin Costner

Votes: 61,597 | Gross: $43.00M

40. Because I Said So (2007)

PG-13 | 102 min | Comedy, Romance

A meddling mother tries to set her daughter up with the right man so her kid won't follow in her footsteps.

Director: Michael Lehmann | Stars: Diane Keaton , Mandy Moore , Gabriel Macht , Tom Everett Scott

Votes: 40,099 | Gross: $42.67M

41. Pretty in Pink (1986)

A poor girl must choose between the affections of dating her childhood sweetheart or a rich but sensitive playboy.

Director: Howard Deutch | Stars: Molly Ringwald , Jon Cryer , Harry Dean Stanton , Annie Potts

Votes: 88,430 | Gross: $40.47M

42. Blind Date (1987)

A workaholic needs a date for a dinner with new important clientele, but who his brother sets him up with could lead to disaster.

Director: Blake Edwards | Stars: Kim Basinger , Bruce Willis , John Larroquette , William Daniels

Votes: 24,126 | Gross: $39.32M

43. 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002)

R | 96 min | Comedy, Romance

After a brutal break-up, a young man vows to stay celibate during the forty days of Lent, but finds the girl of his dreams and is unable to do anything about it.

Director: Michael Lehmann | Stars: Josh Hartnett , Shannyn Sossamon , Paulo Costanzo , Adam Trese

Votes: 75,756 | Gross: $37.95M

44. The Back-up Plan (2010)

PG-13 | 104 min | Comedy, Romance

A woman conceives twins through artificial insemination, then meets the man of her dreams on the very same day.

Director: Alan Poul | Stars: Jennifer Lopez , Alex O'Loughlin , Michaela Watkins , Eric Christian Olsen

Votes: 52,202 | Gross: $37.49M

45. The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

R | 116 min | Comedy, Romance

A newly wed man who believes he's just gotten hitched to the perfect woman encounters another lady on his honeymoon.

Directors: Bobby Farrelly , Peter Farrelly | Stars: Ben Stiller , Michelle Monaghan , Malin Akerman , Jerry Stiller

Votes: 96,448 | Gross: $36.79M

46. Just Friends (I) (2005)

PG-13 | 96 min | Comedy, Romance

While visiting his hometown during Christmas, a man comes face-to-face with his old high-school crush and best friend--a woman whose rejection of him turned him into a ferocious womanizer.

Director: Roger Kumble | Stars: Ryan Reynolds , Amy Smart , Anna Faris , Chris Klein

Votes: 127,146 | Gross: $32.62M

47. Definitely, Maybe (2008)

PG-13 | 112 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A political consultant tries to explain his impending divorce and past relationships to his 11-year-old daughter.

Director: Adam Brooks | Stars: Ryan Reynolds , Rachel Weisz , Abigail Breslin , An Nguyen

Votes: 173,103 | Gross: $31.97M

48. She's Out of My League (2010)

R | 104 min | Comedy, Romance

An average Joe meets the perfect woman, but his lack of confidence and the influence of his friends and family begin to pick away at the relationship.

Director: Jim Field Smith | Stars: Jay Baruchel , Alice Eve , T.J. Miller , Mike Vogel

Votes: 144,197 | Gross: $31.58M

49. The Wedding Date (2005)

Single-girl anxiety causes Kat Ellis to hire a male escort to pose as her boyfriend at her sister's wedding. Her plan, an attempt to dupe her ex-fiancé, who dumped her a couple years prior, proves to be her undoing.

Director: Clare Kilner | Stars: Dermot Mulroney , Debra Messing , Jack Davenport , Amy Adams

Votes: 56,240 | Gross: $31.73M

50. How Do You Know (2010)

PG-13 | 121 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

After being cut from the U.S.A. softball team and feeling a bit past her prime, Lisa finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy in crisis competes with her current, baseball-playing beau.

Director: James L. Brooks | Stars: Reese Witherspoon , Paul Rudd , Owen Wilson , Jack Nicholson

Votes: 54,566 | Gross: $30.21M

51. Picture Perfect (1997)

PG-13 | 101 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A young advertising executive's life becomes increasingly complicated when, in order to impress her boss, she pretends to be engaged to a man she has just met.

Director: Glenn Gordon Caron | Stars: Jennifer Aniston , Jay Mohr , Kevin Bacon , Olympia Dukakis

Votes: 21,425 | Gross: $31.06M

52. Can't Buy Me Love (1987)

PG-13 | 94 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

An outcast secretly pays the most popular girl in school one thousand dollars to pretend to be his girlfriend for a month.

Director: Steve Rash | Stars: Patrick Dempsey , Amanda Peterson , Courtney Gains , Tina Caspary

Votes: 41,818 | Gross: $31.62M

53. 50 First Dates (2004)

PG-13 | 99 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Henry Roth is a man afraid of commitment until he meets the beautiful Lucy. They hit it off and Henry think he's finally found the girl of his dreams until discovering she has short-term memory loss and forgets him the next day.

Director: Peter Segal | Stars: Adam Sandler , Drew Barrymore , Rob Schneider , Sean Astin

Votes: 381,422 | Gross: $120.91M

54. Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)

PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

In New York City, an estranged couple who witness a murder are relocated to small town Wyoming as part of the Witness Protection Program.

Director: Marc Lawrence | Stars: Hugh Grant , Sarah Jessica Parker , Sam Elliott , Elisabeth Moss

Votes: 42,744 | Gross: $29.58M

55. The Prince and Me (2004)

PG | 111 min | Comedy, Family, Romance

At college Paige meets Eddie, a student from Denmark, whom she first dislikes but later accepts, likes, and loves; he proves to be Crown Prince Edvard. Paige follows him to Copenhagen, and he follows her back to school with a plan.

Director: Martha Coolidge | Stars: Julia Stiles , Luke Mably , Miranda Richardson , Ben Miller

Votes: 41,506 | Gross: $28.18M

56. Brown Sugar (2002)

PG-13 | 109 min | Comedy, Drama, Music

Friends since childhood, a magazine editor and a hip-hop record executive stumble into romantic territory.

Director: Rick Famuyiwa | Stars: Taye Diggs , Sanaa Lathan , Yasiin Bey , Nicole Ari Parker

Votes: 10,230 | Gross: $27.36M

57. Someone Like You (2001)

After being jilted by her boyfriend, a talk show talent scout writes a column on the relationship habits of men which gains her national fame.

Director: Tony Goldwyn | Stars: Ashley Judd , Greg Kinnear , Hugh Jackman , Marisa Tomei

Votes: 27,420 | Gross: $27.34M

58. Two Can Play That Game (2001)

R | 90 min | Comedy, Romance

An arrogant career woman plays a series of heartless mind-games with her boyfriend to "put him in line," only to discover that he has a few tricks up his own sleeve.

Director: Mark Brown | Stars: Vivica A. Fox , Morris Chestnut , Anthony Anderson , Gabrielle Union

Votes: 7,361 | Gross: $22.24M

59. Love Don't Cost a Thing (2003)

PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Romance, Drama

A high school loser pays a cheerleader to pose as his girlfriend so he can be considered cool.

Director: Troy Byer | Stars: Nick Cannon , Christina Milian , Jordan Burg , Jackie Benoit

Votes: 9,354 | Gross: $21.90M

60. A Lot Like Love (2005)

Unacquainted Emily and Oliver join the mile-high club together on the way from LAX to NYC--end of story. Except that they keep meeting constantly over the next seven years..

Director: Nigel Cole | Stars: Ashton Kutcher , Amanda Peet , Taryn Manning , Aimee Garcia

Votes: 71,163 | Gross: $21.84M

61. Boys and Girls (2000)

A friendship is put to the ultimate test when two best friends wind up in bed together.

Director: Robert Iscove | Stars: Freddie Prinze Jr. , Claire Forlani , Brendon Ryan Barrett , Gay Thomas Wilson

Votes: 17,589 | Gross: $20.63M

62. Just Wright (2010)

PG | 100 min | Comedy, Romance, Sport

A physical therapist falls for the basketball player she is helping recover from a career-threatening injury.

Director: Sanaa Hamri | Stars: Queen Latifah , Common , Paula Patton , James Pickens Jr.

Votes: 15,629 | Gross: $21.52M

63. Reality Bites (1994)

A documentary filmmaker and her fellow Generation X graduates face life after college, looking for work and love in Houston.

Director: Ben Stiller | Stars: Winona Ryder , Ethan Hawke , Janeane Garofalo , Steve Zahn

Votes: 53,549 | Gross: $20.98M

64. Say Anything (1989)

PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A noble underachiever and a beautiful valedictorian fall in love the summer before she goes off to college.

Director: Cameron Crowe | Stars: John Cusack , Ione Skye , John Mahoney , Lili Taylor

Votes: 95,735 | Gross: $20.78M

65. Little Black Book (2004)

A woman snoops through her boyfriend's palm pilot and reveals his former girlfriends, which causes her to question why they're still listed in his little black book.

Director: Nick Hurran | Stars: Brittany Murphy , Ron Livingston , Holly Hunter , Kathy Bates

Votes: 18,943 | Gross: $20.42M

66. Only You (1994)

PG | 109 min | Comedy, Romance

As a teen, Faith was told that her destiny is a man named Damon Bradley. Years later - Faith is about to marry another man - a Damon Bradley calls to wish them all the best. Faith blows off the wedding and follows Damon to Italy.

Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Marisa Tomei , Robert Downey Jr. , Bonnie Hunt , Joaquim de Almeida

Votes: 25,550 | Gross: $20.04M

67. Summer Catch (2001)

PG-13 | 104 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A rich girl whose family summers on Cape Cod has a romance with a local poor boy who hopes to become a major league baseball player.

Director: Michael Tollin | Stars: Freddie Prinze Jr. , Jessica Biel , Fred Ward , Matthew Lillard

Votes: 16,644 | Gross: $19.69M

68. My Best Friend's Girl (2008)

R | 101 min | Comedy, Romance

Tank faces the ultimate test of friendship when his best friend hires him to take his ex-girlfriend out on a lousy date in order to make her realize how great her former boyfriend is.

Director: Howard Deutch | Stars: Kate Hudson , Dane Cook , Jason Biggs , Alec Baldwin

Votes: 46,360 | Gross: $19.22M

69. Waitress (2007)

Jenna is a pregnant, unhappily married waitress in the deep south. She meets a newcomer to her town and falls into an unlikely relationship as a last attempt at happiness.

Director: Adrienne Shelly | Stars: Keri Russell , Nathan Fillion , Jeremy Sisto , Cheryl Hines

Votes: 48,785 | Gross: $19.07M

70. Laws of Attraction (2004)

Amidst a sea of litigation, two New York City divorce lawyers find love.

Director: Peter Howitt | Stars: Pierce Brosnan , Julianne Moore , Parker Posey , Michael Sheen

Votes: 24,562 | Gross: $17.85M

71. Drive Me Crazy (1999)

PG-13 | 91 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Nicole and Chase used to be BFFs, then junior high happened. The high school centennial dance is coming but Nicole gets dumped. So does Chase. They stage a relationship to get at their exes. They visit each other's worlds. Love in the air?

Director: John Schultz | Stars: Melissa Joan Hart , Adrian Grenier , Stephen Collins , Mark Metcalf

Votes: 21,256 | Gross: $17.85M

72. Going the Distance (2010)

R | 102 min | Comedy, Romance

A romantic comedy centered on a guy and a gal who try to keep their love alive as they shuttle back and forth between New York and San Francisco to see one another.

Director: Nanette Burstein | Stars: Drew Barrymore , Justin Long , Ron Livingston , Charlie Day

Votes: 59,962 | Gross: $17.80M

73. Just My Luck (2006)

PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

Manhattanite Ashley is known to many as the luckiest woman around. After a chance encounter with a down-and-out young man, however, she realizes that she's swapped her fortune for his.

Director: Donald Petrie | Stars: Lindsay Lohan , Chris Pine , Samaire Armstrong , Bree Turner

Votes: 61,498 | Gross: $17.32M

74. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

A small-town girl wins a date with a male celebrity through a contest. When the date goes better than expected, a love triangle forms between the girl, the male celebrity, and the girl's best friend.

Director: Robert Luketic | Stars: Kate Bosworth , Josh Duhamel , Topher Grace , Nathan Lane

Votes: 29,412 | Gross: $17.07M

75. Serving Sara (2002)

A process server tries to serve an elusive female target.

Director: Reginald Hudlin | Stars: Matthew Perry , Elizabeth Hurley , Bruce Campbell , Vincent Pastore

Votes: 18,784 | Gross: $16.93M

76. That Old Feeling (1997)

PG-13 | 105 min | Comedy, Romance

A bride's divorced parents find their old feelings for each other during the wedding reception and over the course of the next few days upsetting the newlywed's honeymoon.

Director: Carl Reiner | Stars: Bette Midler , Dennis Farina , Paula Marshall , Gail O'Grady

Votes: 4,071 | Gross: $16.33M

77. The Perfect Man (2005)

PG | 100 min | Comedy, Family, Romance

A lonely mother begins receiving romantic e-mails from a secret admirer, unaware that this perfect man is really a creation of her daughter who is trying to cheer her up.

Director: Mark Rosman | Stars: Hilary Duff , Heather Locklear , Aria Wallace , Chris Noth

Votes: 32,050 | Gross: $16.25M

78. A Guy Thing (2003)

PG-13 | 101 min | Comedy, Romance

A soon-to-be husband wakes up on the morning after his bachelor party in bed with another woman.

Director: Chris Koch | Stars: Jason Lee , Julia Stiles , Selma Blair , James Brolin

Votes: 18,350 | Gross: $15.41M

79. Life or Something Like It (2002)

A reporter interviews a psychic, who tells her that she's going to die and her life is meaningless.

Director: Stephen Herek | Stars: Angelina Jolie , Edward Burns , Tony Shalhoub , Christian Kane

Votes: 28,071 | Gross: $14.45M

80. The Pick-up Artist (1987)

PG-13 | 81 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama

A womanizer meets his match when he falls for a woman in debt to the mafia.

Director: James Toback | Stars: Molly Ringwald , Robert Downey Jr. , Dennis Hopper , Danny Aiello

Votes: 7,836 | Gross: $13.29M

81. Chasing Liberty (2004)

Anna wants to be like other girls her age (18): date a guy etc. but she's the US president's daughter and always guarded. In Prague he breaks his promise of only 2 agents following her to a concert and she runs away with Ben to see Europe.

Director: Andy Cadiff | Stars: Mandy Moore , Matthew Goode , Mark Harmon , Stark Sands

Votes: 41,017 | Gross: $12.19M

82. The Last Kiss (2006)

R | 104 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Michael, at 30, has a great job, still have his four best friends, and has a beautiful girlfriend, but his life seems predictable. Until he meets a college girl. It seems that everybody's having relationship problems.

Director: Tony Goldwyn | Stars: Zach Braff , Jacinda Barrett , Rachel Bilson , Casey Affleck

Votes: 42,239 | Gross: $11.60M

83. Hitch (I) (2005)

PG-13 | 118 min | Comedy, Romance

A smooth-talking man falls for a hardened columnist while helping a shy accountant woo a beautiful heiress.

Director: Andy Tennant | Stars: Will Smith , Eva Mendes , Kevin James , Amber Valletta

Votes: 335,000 | Gross: $179.50M

84. Get Over It (2001)

PG-13 | 87 min | Comedy, Romance

A high school senior's girlfriend breaks up with him. His friends try to make him think of something else. His friend's sister Kelly helps him with the school musical. Spending time with Kelly has an effect.

Director: Tommy O'Haver | Stars: Kirsten Dunst , Ben Foster , Melissa Sagemiller , Sisqó

Votes: 19,994 | Gross: $11.58M

85. Something New (I) (2006)

Kenya McQueen, an accountant finds love in the most unexpected place when she agrees to go on a blind date with Brian Kelly, a sexy and free-spirited landscaper.

Director: Sanaa Hamri | Stars: Sanaa Lathan , Simon Baker , Golden Brooks , Fuzzy Fantabulous

Votes: 14,445 | Gross: $11.43M

86. First Daughter (2004)

PG | 106 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

The daughter of the U.S. President heads off to college where she falls for a graduate student with a secret.

Director: Forest Whitaker | Stars: Katie Holmes , Marc Blucas , Michael Keaton , Amerie

Votes: 27,211 | Gross: $9.06M

87. Imagine Me & You (2005)

R | 90 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A newlywed bride becomes infatuated with another woman who questions her sexual orientation, promoting a stir among the bride's family and friends.

Director: Ol Parker | Stars: Piper Perabo , Lena Headey , Matthew Goode , Celia Imrie

Votes: 35,919 | Gross: $0.67M

88. Little Manhattan (2005)

PG | 90 min | Comedy, Family, Romance

A 10-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl find love in New York City.

Director: Mark Levin | Stars: Josh Hutcherson , Charlotte Ray Rosenberg , Bradley Whitford , Cynthia Nixon

Votes: 24,773 | Gross: $0.38M

89. Never Again (2001)

R | 98 min | Comedy, Romance

Two people who have pledged never to fall in love again then discover each other in a gay bar.

Director: Eric Schaeffer | Stars: Jeffrey Tambor , Jill Clayburgh , Caroline Aaron , Bill Duke

Votes: 971 | Gross: $0.30M

90. The Romantics (2010)

PG-13 | 95 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Seven close friends reunite for the wedding of two of their friends. Problems arise because the bride and the maid of honor have had a long rivalry over the groom.

Director: Galt Niederhoffer | Stars: Katie Holmes , Anna Paquin , Josh Duhamel , Malin Akerman

Votes: 12,515 | Gross: $0.10M

91. What Women Want (2011)

Not Rated | 116 min | Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi

After an accident, a chauvinistic executive gains the ability to hear what women are really thinking.

Director: Daming Chen | Stars: Andy Lau , Gong Li , Li Yuan , Julian Chen

Votes: 1,397 | Gross: $0.12M

92. All Over the Guy (2001)

R | 95 min | Comedy, Romance

"All Over The Guy" is a contemporary romantic comedy about the quest to find the "one" when "the one" doesn't know he's the "one." It explores the unlikely pairing of two 20-somethings ... See full summary  »

Director: Julie Davis | Stars: Dan Bucatinsky , Richard Ruccolo , Sasha Alexander , Adam Goldberg

Votes: 4,974 | Gross: $1.01M

93. Crush (I) (2001)

R | 108 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Three 40-something women in a small English town meet weekly for a ritual of gin, cigarettes, and sweets -- and swap stories arguing which of them has the most pathetic love life. Kate is ... See full summary  »

Director: John McKay | Stars: Andie MacDowell , Imelda Staunton , Anna Chancellor , Kenny Doughty

Votes: 3,954 | Gross: $1.08M

94. Head Over Heels (2001)

PG-13 | 86 min | Comedy, Mystery, Romance

A young woman is attracted to a man despite her thinking she's seen him kill someone.

Director: Mark Waters | Stars: Monica Potter , Freddie Prinze Jr. , Shalom Harlow , Ivana Milicevic

Votes: 15,282 | Gross: $10.40M

95. Whatever It Takes (2000)

A modern-day remake of the Cyrano DeBergerac tale.

Director: David Raynr | Stars: Shane West , Marla Sokoloff , Jodi Lyn O'Keefe , Manu Intiraymi

Votes: 11,974 | Gross: $8.74M

96. My Life in Ruins (2009)

A disgruntled tour guide in Greece gains an unexpected new outlook on life thanks to one of the people on what she intends to be her last tour.

Director: Donald Petrie | Stars: Nia Vardalos , Richard Dreyfuss , Rachel Dratch , Alexis Georgoulis

Votes: 20,851 | Gross: $8.66M

97. Boat Trip (2002)

R | 94 min | Comedy

Two straight men mistakenly end up on a "gays only" cruise.

Director: Mort Nathan | Stars: Cuba Gooding Jr. , Horatio Sanz , Roselyn Sanchez , Vivica A. Fox

Votes: 32,344 | Gross: $8.59M

98. On the Line (2001)

PG | 85 min | Comedy, Family, Romance

A shy advertising employee meets his dream girl on the El train, but doesn't remember to get her phone number, resulting in an all-out search for the mystery girl

Director: Eric Bross | Stars: Lance Bass , Joey Fatone , Emmanuelle Chriqui , GQ

Votes: 4,407 | Gross: $4.36M

99. Anything Else (2003)

Jerry Falk learns a lesson the hard way when he falls in love with the beautiful but flighty Amanda.

Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen , Jason Biggs , Christina Ricci , Danny DeVito

Votes: 32,636 | Gross: $3.20M

100. There's Something About Mary (1998)

A man gets a chance to meet up with his dream girl from high school, even though his date with her back then was a complete disaster.

Directors: Bobby Farrelly , Peter Farrelly | Stars: Cameron Diaz , Matt Dillon , Ben Stiller , Lee Evans

Votes: 328,454 | Gross: $176.48M

List Activity

Tell your friends, other lists by mizztrini25.

Recently Viewed

21 Romantic Movies Coming Out in 2023 That Need to Be on Your Watchlist

*Preemptively pops popcorn.*

Love classic high school romance à la The Summer I Turned Pretty ? Check out Disney+'s Prom Pact , a tale of a girl who has set her sights on attending Harvard, but needs the help of a charming fellow classmate to get off the waitlist. Looking for a movie that has heart-stopping romance and action? Look no further than J.Lo's Shotgun Wedding , which sees a couple's extravagant destination wedding get hijacked by criminals. Even legendary romance songstress Celine Dion ( T itanic , anyone?) pops up on this list, with the star making her acting debut in Love Again . Plus, get ready to swoon over Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell onscreen together in the December rom-com, Anyone But You .

Grab a few blankets, pop some popcorn, and get ready to settle in with the best romantic movies 2023 has to offer.

Shotgun Wedding

When it premieres: January 27, 2023 on Prime Video

What it's about: When reluctant bride Darcy's (Jennifer Lopez) destination wedding is taken over by a band of criminals, she and her husband-to-be (Josh Duhamel) go through the ultimate couple's therapy as they work together to save their guests.

MORE: The Best New Comedy Movies of 2023

Your Place or Mine

When it premieres: February 10, 2023 on Netflix

What it's about: Long-distance best friends Debby (Reese Witherspoon) and Peter (Ashton Kutcher) live on opposites coasts of the U.S. But when they swap homes and lives for a week, the two discover the life they thought they wanted may not be the life they actually need .

Watch the trailer here

When it premieres: March 30, 2023 on Disney Channel , then March 31, 2023 on Disney+

What it's about: Prom season is in full swing, but Mandy (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) only cares about one thing: getting into Harvard. But when she's waitlisted, she's forced to ask the charming, popular guy named Graham (Blake Draper) — whose father has connections — for help.

MORE: The Best New Teen Movies of 2023

When it premieres: March 31, 2023 on Hulu

What it's about: This British rom-com had its premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and follows two twenty-somethings, both reeling from breakups, who have one unforgettable day in South London. Together, they help each other deal with their exes while also making themselves believe in romance again.

When it premieres: April 12, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Dylan Sprouse stars in the film adaptation of Jamie McGuire's book of the same name . He plays Travis, a bad boy who continuously tries wooing good girl Abby (Virginia Gardner). After they make a bet and she loses, Abby has to spend a month at Travis's place. However, he doesn't know about her dark past that's coming back to haunt her.

When it premieres: April 21, 2023 on Apple TV+

What it's about: What would you do if the person you fell head over heels for ended up being a secret agent? That's what Cole (Chris Evans) has to figure out when he learns what Sadie's (Ana de Armas) day job is.

After only one date, the duo quickly get caught up in an international escapade to save the world. (And you thought your dating life was tough!)

A Tourist's Guide to Love

When it premieres: April 21, 2023 on Netflix

What it's about: After a travel executive goes through a breakup, she accepts an assignment to go undercover in Vietnam to learn about their tourist industry. While she's there, she begins to fall for her tour guide.

When it premieres: May 12, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays a woman struggling to move on after the death of her fiancé. To handle her grief, she begins sending messages to his old phone number, which has now been reassigned to a new man, played by Sam Heughan.

Celine Dion is not only releasing new music for this flick — but she's also making her acting debut in it.

The Little Mermaid

When it premieres: May 16, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: This long-awaited live-action version of the 1989 Disney animated classic ( which you can currently stream on Disney+ ) is about a mermaid who strikes up a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for legs so she can explore life above sea level. On land, she meets the handsome Prince Eric.

MORE: Everything We Know About Disney's The Little Mermaid Live-Action Film

You Hurt My Feelings

When it premieres: May 26, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Another Sundance Film Festival premiere movie , You Hurt My Feelings is about a couple whose marriage is in trouble after a writer overhears her husband giving a brutally honest opinion of her new book.

When it premieres: June 2, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Like Rye Lane , Past Lives also had its premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival . Two childhood friends are torn apart after one of them and their family emigrates from South Korea to Canada. Decades later, the long-lost pals are reunited for one week, and they both find out their lives have changed drastically.

When it premieres: June 16, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Set in Element City, where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, the story introduces the quick-witted and fiery Ember, whose friendship with the fun and laid-back Wade challenges her beliefs about the world they live in.

MORE: Upcoming Disney Movies in 2023 That Will Bring on All the Magic

The Perfect Find

When it premieres: June 23, 2023 on Netflix

What it's about: Based on Tia Williams's book of the same name , The Perfect Find follows a woman who falls for her younger co-worker... who is also her boss's son. Can they manage to keep their relationship a secret?

Love in Taipei

When it premieres: August 10, 2023 on Paramount+

What it's about: Fuller House 's Ashley Liao, 13 Reasons Why 's Ross Butler, and Booksmart 's Nico Hiraga co-star in this rom-com based on Abigail Hing Wen's book, Loveboat, Taipei .

When Ohio teenager Ever Wong travels to Taiwan for the summer for a cultural immersion program, she quickly falls for two guys and gets caught up in a steamy love triangle.

Red, White & Royal Blue

When it premieres: August 11, 2023 on Prime Video

What it's about: When Alex Claremont-Diaz — the handsome and charming Mexican-American son of the President of the United States — and Prince Henry of England's feud hits the tabloids, the two are forced to feign friendship for the sake of amicable U.S.-British relations. But the line between fiction and reality begins to blur as Alex and Henry spend more time together, discover who the other really is, and ultimately, fall in love.

MORE: Everything We Know About Red, White & Royal Blue

When it premieres: August 22, 2023 on digital platforms

When her fiancé sleeps with a famous person who's on his "free pass" list, Abby decides to sleep with someone on her list.

After Everything

When it premieres: In theaters September 13 & 14, 2023

What it's about: The final chapter in the After franchise continues the steamy relationship between Hardin and Tessa. This movie follows Hardin as he struggles to finish his book and get Tessa back in his life.

MORE: Everything You Need to Know About After Everything , the Fifth After Film

Challengers

When it premieres: September 13, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Three talented tennis players get caught up in a love triangle, experiencing plenty of drama both on and off the court.

Love at First Sight

When it premieres: September 15, 2023 on Netflix

What it's about: Thanks to a chance encounter at an airport, two people begin to fall in love during an overseas flight. When they land, however, they end up separated and desperately try to reunite.

Anyone But You

When it premieres: December 15, 2023 in theaters

What it's about: Enemies in college, two people reunite long after graduation and pretend to be a couple when they both attend the same destination wedding.

MORE: What to Know About Sydney Sweeney's New Rom-Com

Abby is an editorial assistant at Seventeen, covering pop culture, beauty, life, and health. When she's not busy watching the latest true crime docuseries, you can find her strolling through Sephora, thrifting the perfect dress, or jogging with her pup. 

Stacey Grant is a senior editor at Seventeen who runs the brand's Snapchat Discover channel. She also covers entertainment topics specializing in nostalgia, such as classic '90s and '00s Disney Channel and Nickelodeon content.

Movies & TV

Everything We Know About ‘Emily in Paris’ Season 4

Watch Out for this 'Stranger Things' Catfish Scam

The Meaning of Margot's Yellow Dress in Barbie

Here's the Deal With the 'Snow White' Discourse

Is Prince Henry Based on British Royalty IRL? 👀

Will "The Summer I Turned Pretty" Be Back For S3?

Here's Why Jeremiah Narrated an Episode of ‘TSITP‘

Zendaya Honors Angus Cloud’s Life

Family of Mallory Beach Gets $15M in Lawsuit

43 of the Best '80s Horror Movies

35 Funny Christmas Movies That Will Make You LOL

• Tickets & Showtimes
• Trending on RT

• Best Movies/TV
• Fan Favorites
• Movies by Genre
• TV by Genre
• Past Winners

Best Romance Movies 2022

Best Romance wasn’t the most star-studded category in 2022, save for maybe Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All starring Timothée Chalamet, but it showcased love and relationships from a variety of international perspectives. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? brought us a tale of magical realism from Georgia, France’s Anaïs in Love offered a lighthearted look at star-crossed love, and even 7 Days delved into the disconnect between first and second generation Indian-Americans. But it was Finland’s Girl Picture that won over the critics with its honest portrayal of female friendship and coming-of-age romance.

The order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2022) after adjustment from our ranking formula, which compensates for variation in the number of reviews when comparing movies or TV shows.

Girl Picture (2022) 99%

A Love Song (2022) 95%

Ali & Ava (2021) 94%

Bros (2022) 88%

Anaïs in Love (2021) 90%

Bones and All (2022) 81%

I Want You Back (2022) 86%

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021) 89%

One Fine Morning (2022) 93%

7 Days (2021) 86%

More golden tomato awards 2022.

Golden Year Award 2023

Best Movies 2022

Best Wide Release Movies 2022

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

CinemaCon 2024: Day 3 – Disney Previews Deadpool & Wolverine , Moana 2 , Alien: Romulus , and More

April 11, 2024

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

TV Premiere Dates 2024

Fallout First Reviews: A ‘Violent, Fun, Emotional, Epic’ Video Game Adaptation, Critics Say

April 10, 2024

Top Headlines

• Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now –
• 25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming –
• 30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming –
• Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked – New Scary Movies to Watch –
• Box Office 2024: Top 10 Movies of the Year –
• Best TV Shows of 2024: Best New Series to Watch Now –

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The Greatest Hits review – cutesy music romance plays a forgettable tune

Lucy Boynton plays a woman who can travel back in time with the power of a song in a high-concept, low-enjoyment fantasy

I n the often insufferably cutesy romance The Greatest Hits, our heroine travels back in time whenever a song from her past is played, nostalgia acting as a magical, transporting force. While watching the film, we too are pulled back but rather to all of the far superior films we’re inconveniently reminded of, from High Fidelity to Richard Curtis’s similarly high-concept About Time to the ’00s Sundance breakouts (500) Days of Summer and Garden State. It’s a film about the power that great music has in distracting us from the now that instead showcases the power that great films have in distracting us from the lesser ones they inspire.

But even without the many whiffs of familiarity, writer-director Ned Benson’s film would still be hitting a bum note. It’s all too self-consciously disheveled, every band T-shirt looking less like it was found at a gig and more like it was bought at an Urban Outfitters and it’s this slick cleanness that affects both style and story. Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is stuck in a grief spiral after her longtime boyfriend Max (new Superman David Corenswet) dies in a car accident. She’s shifted jobs, become withdrawn and walks around with ear plugs and a giant pair of headphones because it’s not just that certain songs take her mind back to certain moments with him, it’s that they take her entire body as well. If she hears a song that was playing at some point during their relationship, she’s thrown back to that exact moment. Her efforts to save him remain fruitless, though, and so her blessing becomes a curse.

Benson’s debut The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby – an ambitious trilogy of films following the dissolution of a marriage from different perspectives – offered up something tantalising in concept, but he never quite found enough truth or raw emotion to affect us in the way a film about something so difficult really should. We’re in glossier, more heightened territory here, but in a film about grief and how we struggle to course-correct after loss, and there’s also nothing wrenching within, everything too broad and stylised to get to us. The decision to only show Max either in Harriet’s brief journeys back or in fleeting montage means that we never really get to know him as anything but a handsome cipher, and so we’re told to mourn a relationship that means nothing. Her thankless gay bestie tells her “you lost yourself when you lost him,” which means very little when we don’t know who she or he ever was.

Harriet meets someone new – the charming Justin H Min – but their courtship is too twee and artificial as well as dated (at one moment, I said he’d better not be taking her to a silent disco, and he then takes her to a silent disco). It’s the kind of real-people-don’t-act-like-this romance that Min’s last film, Randall Park’s incisive comedy Shortcomings, would have ridiculed. Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

Premiering at SXSW, it moves more like a Sundance film from years prior or one a studio would craft to look like it belonged there, a calculated crowd-pleaser with a cold, synthetic feel. Despite that title, this one’s a miss.

The Greatest Hits is available on Hulu on 12 April in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere

• Romance films
• Drama films
• Science fiction and fantasy films

Most viewed

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

The tearsmith, common sense media reviewers.

Moody teen romance has sex, language, and violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

To love takes courage. Abuse can cause people to s

Teenagers have residual trauma from physical and e

The film is shot in Italy and in Italian. One of t

Kids lose their parents and are physically and emo

Two teens share a strong mutual attraction. They k

One use of "f--k," plus "s--t," "a--hole," and "id

The film could inspire interest in the book it's b

Teens drink alcohol; one says she wants to "drink

Parents need to know that book-based Italian melodrama The Tearsmith has a dark and moody feel and features teenagers who have suffered abuse, experience violent situations, and embark on sexual relationships. The film also has language (in the English subtitles, "f--k" plus "s--t" and "a--hole") and teen…

Positive Messages

To love takes courage. Abuse can cause people to shut down their emotions. People can overcome traumatic experiences. Grieving takes time. Women deserve respectful treatment.

Positive Role Models

Teenagers have residual trauma from physical and emotional abuse they experienced as children. The trauma makes them question their own self-worth and their ability to love others or lead normal lives. Young men behave violently to get what they want in love, and also in sex. A couple suffering the loss of their own son adopt two teenagers and treat them as family.

Diverse Representations

The film is shot in Italy and in Italian. One of the key characters is a lesbian who hasn't revealed her sexuality because she's in love with her best friend. Background characters show a diversity of races.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Kids lose their parents and are physically and emotionally abused in an orphanage. They're tied down to beds, threatened, and say they were "tortured." They grow up with a kind of post-traumatic stress that leads to flashbacks and emotional turmoil for some. Two different car accidents leave people dead or comatose. A boy has a neurological condition that has gone untreated. A boy tries to kiss a girl repeatedly and he eventually gets violent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two teens share a strong mutual attraction. They kiss and fondle each other. We see his hands on her breasts, inside the top of her pants, and on her bottom as he kisses her. We see her nipples when the two take off each other's shirts.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One use of "f--k," plus "s--t," "a--hole," and "idiot" in the English subtitles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The film could inspire interest in the book it's based on as well as other titles by the same author.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teens drink alcohol; one says she wants to "drink herself to sleep." A boy takes a medication that he hides from others.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that book-based Italian melodrama The Tearsmith has a dark and moody feel and features teenagers who have suffered abuse, experience violent situations, and embark on sexual relationships. The film also has language (in the English subtitles, "f--k" plus "s--t" and "a--hole") and teen drinking. Two teens share a strong mutual attraction. They kiss and fondle each other. We see his hands on her breasts, inside the top of her pants, and on her bottom as he kisses her. We see her nipples when the two take off each other's shirts. Another boy tries to kiss her repeatedly as well, and he eventually gets violent. The teens are recovering from extreme physical and emotional trauma as children in an orphanage. The trauma makes them question their own self-worth and their ability to love others or lead normal lives. Kids and adults deal with death and loss. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)

Based on 5 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In THE TEARSMITH, Nica (Caterina Ferioli) and Rigel (Simone Baldasseroni) are children in a bleak orphanage run by a sadistic woman. Rigel watches out for Nica, and when she's adopted as a teen, he asks to go with her. There, Nica will attempt to fit in with her new family and classmates, while Rigel will continue to lurk in the shadows without explaining his intentions or his own mysterious recurring headaches. Nica begins dating classmate Lionel (Alessandro Bedetti), but she can't deny her feelings for Rigel. Will their mutual attraction destroy their new lives and send them back to the orphanage?

Is It Any Good?

Twilight meets the After series in this tortured teen romance from Italy that features an excellent lead performance and murky undertones of childhood loss and trauma. The Tearsmith 's shadowy settings and moody soundtrack (featuring Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo ) underscore the tale's dark elements. The voiceover and dialogues also make frequent reference to fairytales, particularly the character of the wolf. This adds to the ambiance but was ultimately unnecessary. Teens can have epic romances without a need for meta myths, near-death experiences, or melodrama. Even so, The Tearsmith makes for engaging entertainment, and star Ferioli is especially magnetic.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the abuse the characters in The Tearsmith experienced as children. How did this continue to impact them as teenagers, even outside the orphanage?

How would you describe the mood of this movie? How about its color palette?

What were some of the fairy tale elements in the movie? Would the film have been the same for you without these?

The film uses a lot of voiceovers to explain characters and storylines. Were there other ways the film could have filled in these pieces? Can you think of examples?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : April 4, 2024
• Cast : Caterina Ferioli , Simone Baldasseroni , Alessandro Bedetti
• Director : Alessandro Genovesi
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Female writers
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Romance
• Topics : Book Characters , Fairy Tales , Friendship , High School
• Run time : 105 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : April 9, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

After Everything (2023)

Through My Window: Looking at You

Teen romance novels, romance movies, related topics.

• Book Characters
• Fairy Tales
• High School

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Movie Nights at Home

- Snacks & Ideas for Families, Friends & Couples

30 Best Romance Movies Based on Books That You’ll Love

Who doesn’t love a good romance? Whether you enjoy reading a love story in the pages of a book or watching it on the big screen, you can get the best of both worlds when you watch these romance movies based on books.

Each of these films brings beloved love stories from the pages to the screen, giving you a chance to see your favorite couples come to life. Whether you’re in the mood for a tearjerker or a feel-good comedy, there’s no shortage of romantic films waiting for you.

From classic novels to contemporary bestsellers, there’s nothing better than a romance book turned into a movie!

Not only do these movies give us a chance to see our favorite book characters on the big screen, but they also allow us to revisit our favorite stories from new perspectives. 

30 Romance Movies Based on Books

Whether you're looking for a passionate period drama or a modern-day love story, these adaptations have something for everyone. The next time you’re ready for some romance, check out one of these amazing book adaptations.

The Notebook

Rated PG-13

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner

In 1940s South Carolina, mill worker Noah and rich girl Allie are desperately in love. When Noah goes off to serve in World War II, their love affair comes to an end. But when Noah returns years later, on the eve of Allie's wedding, it becomes clear that their romance isn’t through.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Starring: Kiera Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Carey Mulligan

Elizabeth Bennet lives with her family in the English countryside. As the eldest daughter, she faces pressure from her parents to marry. And when the outspoken Elizabeth is introduced to the handsome and upper-class Mr. Darcy, sparks begin to fly.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Starring: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant

When the new year starts, Bridget Jones decides to start writing a diary. In order to make the pages of her journal a little more interesting, she sparks up two relationships with a pair of eligible bachelors.

Crazy Rich Asians

Starring: Constance Wu, Awkafina, Henry Golding

While on a trip to Singapore with her fiancé, a woman’s life is turned upside down when she discovers that the man she’s dating belongs to one of the wealthiest families in Asia.

Starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp

When a single mom and her 6-year old daughter open a chocolate chop in rural France, they're met with opposition by the local church. The church is upset that they're open on Sunday's, but the mother-daughter pair warm their way into the community in this heartwarming movie.

Watch To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Starring: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Ana Cathcart

To help work out her feelings, Lara Jean writes secret, soul-baring letters to her five crushes. And while she never meant to send them, they somehow get out and begin to wreak havoc on her life.

Water For Elephants

Starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon

Looking back over his life, an old man recalls memories about working for a cirus during the Depression.

Me Before You

Starring: Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin, Matthew Lewis

When she becomes a caregiver for a wealthy young banker left paralyzed from an accident, a young woman’s cheerfulness is put to the test. But his cynical attitude starts to change when the pair’s bond begins to deepens.

Little Women

Starring: Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale

Faced with financial shortages, family tragedies, and romantic rivalries in mid-19th-century Massachusetts, a group of sisters cling to each other during hard times.

Gone with the Wind

Starring: Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel

This epic Civil War drama focuses on the life of Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara, beginning with her life on a sprawling plantation through the tragic history of the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction, along with her tangled love affairs with Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler.

The Last Song

Starring: Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, Greg Kinnear

When she’s sent to live with her father for the summer, New York teen Ronnie is in no mood to spend the season away from her friends in a small Southern beach town. That is until she meets Will, who makes her change her mind.

The Great Gatsby

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan

This movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, best-selling novel, Great Gatsby, is as gorgeous as it is entertaining!

It also won several awards including the Academy Award for production design and costumes.

Finding You

Starring Rose Reid and Jedidiah Goodacre

An aspiring violinist visits Ireland and finds herself in an unlikely romantic relationship with a handsome actor in a popular movie series.

Sense And Sensibility

Starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, and Alan Rickman

This is another film adaptation of classic Jane Austen's romance novels. Two sisters of different temperments navigate love and life in the early 19th century in this classic film.

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell

After suffering cruel abuse by her aunt, Jane Eyre is cast out and sent to a charity school. When she takes a job as a governess at the estate of Edward Rochester years later, the two begin to bond until Jane uncovers the terrible secret Rochester has been hiding,

The Princess Bride

Starring: Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Billy Crystal

A beautiful young woman and her one true love must find each other after a long separation. But the evils of the mythical kingdom of Florin threaten to stop the lovers from being reunited with each other.

Under The Tuscan Sun

Starring: Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Raoul Bova

When Frances finds out that her husband is cheating on her, her best friend encourages her to take a tour of Italy to get over the breakup. During the trip, the new divorcée impulsively decides to purchase a rural Tuscan villa and begins to start a new life.

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner

When high-school student Bella Swan moves from sunny Arizona to rainy Washington State, she doesn’t expect to fit in. Then she meets Edward Cullen, a handsome but mysterious teen and enters into a dangerous romance.

Starring: Anna Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, Johnny Flynn

Emma occupies herself with matchmaking while living in Georgian- and Regency-era England. But her sometimes misguided efforts often result in her meddling in the lives of her friends and family.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Starring: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, Krysten Ritter

Rebecca Bloomwood loves to shop -- so much that she is drowning in debt. So, while she would love to work at the city's top fashion magazine, she instead lands a job as an advice columnist for a financial magazine. When her column becomes an overnight success, her secret shopping habit threatens to ruin her love life and career.

Something Borrowed

Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, John Krasinski

After one too many drinks at her 30th-birthday party, Rachel unexpectedly falls into bed with her longtime crush, Dex -- who happens to be engaged to her best friend. And the affair threatens to destroy the women's lifelong friendship.

The Summer I Turned Pretty

Starring Gavin Casalegno, Lola Tong, Christopher Briney, and Sean Kaufman

This 3 part series created and produced by author Jenny Han follows Belly Conklin before she turns 16.

The Lucky One

Starring: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner

One thing kept U.S. Marine Sgt. Logan Thibault alive during his tour of duty in Iraq - a photograph of a woman he doesn't even know. After learning who the woman is, he goes to meet her and eventually a romance blooms.

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Julianne Hough, Cobie Smothers

To escape her dark past, Katie moves to a small town on the North Carolina coast and is won over by the warmth and caring of the close-knit community. With the help of widower Alex and his children, Katie learns to love and trust again until a mysterious stranger arrives and starts asking questions.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Starring: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Hailey McCann

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder that causes him to drift uncontrollably through time, a Chicago librarian meets the love of his while time traveling. But he soon finds that he and his love are constantly out of sync thanks to his inability to remain in one time and place.

Message in a Bottle

Starring: Kevin Costner, Robin Wright, Paul Newman

While running on the beach, a journalist discovers a bottle in the sand with a heartbreaking love letter inside. After her paper publishes the letter, she tracks down the author and soon finds herself falling hopelessly in love with him.

A Walk to Remember

Starring: Mandy Moore, Shane West, Lauren German

An aimless high school senior falls in love with a young woman who he and his friends once scorned in this Nicholas Sparks book made into movie.

Starring: Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Scott Porter

A relationship between a soldier and a college student turns rocky when the soldier leaves on dangerous deployments. In spite of it all, the lovers stay in touch through their letters to keep their relationship alive.

The Fault in Our Stars

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern

When a 16-year-old cancer patient falls in love with a teen from her cancer support group, they bond over their shared love of books. So when Gus scores an invitation to meet her favorite author, he and Hazel embark on the adventure of their lives.

P.S. I Love You

Starring: Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Knowing how hard his wife will take his death, a dying husband plans ahead and sends a series of love letters written by him to help ease her grief and encourage her to move forward.

If you love this list of best romantic films, you may also like:

• Romance Movies Like The Notebook
• Great Black Romantic Movies
• Romance Dance Movies
• Romantic Movie Date Night Ideas for Couples

We’d love to know your handful of favorite romantic movies and books about young love, kindred spirit, and the occasional dark secret.

Let us know your favorite romance movies based on books on Facebook!

Shop Our Shop

Latest Blog Posts

Best Romance Movies You Can Watch for Free on YouTube

• Free romance movies on YouTube offer classic screwball plots and feel-good rom-coms for cozy nights in.
• From The Accidental Husband to Ball of Fire, there's a range of romances available with a simple click on YouTube.
• Keep up with YouTube's latest free offerings for rom-com fans like What Women Want and The Back-Up Plan for a heartfelt movie night.

Nothing screams a cozy night in quite like a good Romance movie. With so many streaming platforms at our disposal, each with their own select user fee, it's hard not to spend an arm and a leg to tame that love story fix. Viewers who know where to look, however, can find some of their favorites go tos free of charge if they know where to look. Fortunately, the number of no-charge streaming options has soared in recent years. Those willing to sit through an ad or five will find their options ripe for watching.

Oldie but goodie YouTube just so happens to be one of these options.YouTube has a plethora of movies to choose from that are free (with ads). While obvious favorites like The Twilight Saga and forgotten cult classics like Cry, Baby abound, there are far more options for those looking for a classic screwball or drama. From Ball of Fire to A Walk to Remember , to What Women Want , here are some of the best romance movies you can watch for free on YouTube.

Updated March 9th, 2024 by Amanda Minchin : Rom-com fanatics and the like will be glad to know this article was just updated to include YouTube's most up-to-date listings!

The Accidental Husband (2008)

The accidental husband.

Release Date February 29, 2008

Director Griffin Dunne

Cast Uma Thurman, Colin Firth, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lindsay Sloane, Sam Shepard, Justina Machado

Rating PG-13

Genres Romance, Comedy

The Accidental Husband is a romantic comedy from 2008 that starred Uma Turman as Emma and The Walking Dead 's own Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Patrick. In this film, radio host and relationship advice guru Emma's world is turned upside down when her upcoming marriage to Richard (Colin Firth) is delayed because she is still technically married to a man named Patrick. Patrick is a firefighter and the cunning mastermind behind Emma's troubles. He fabricates an elaborate plan for revenge that eventually leads to an unintentional and unexpected love story.

A Classic 2000s Delight

The title alone practically guarantees a formulaic, feel-good time. Uma Thurman provides a knock-out performance worthy of screwball originals, and her co-stars aren't too shabby either. Colin Firth is notorious for his leading male roles in romcoms like Bridget Jones' Diary , so his casting is perfect. Jeffrey Dean Morgan shows a familiarly scheming, but far more wholesome side to his acting repertoire. The film is chock-full of the typical screwball plot devices, from overly complicated problem-solving to impractically dramatic stakes, and has all the makings of a comfortable rom-com binge.

Stream on YouTube

The Back-Up Plan (2010)

The back-up plan.

Release Date April 23, 2010

Director Alan Poul

Cast Noureen DeWulf, Michaela Watkins, Jennifer Lopez, Alex O'Loughlin, Eric Christian Olsen, Anthony Anderson

Runtime 106

Continuing on the romantic comedy train, 2010's The Back-Up Plan , starring Jennifer Lopez and Alex O'Loughlin, is a solid choice for a free movie on YouTube. This rollercoaster of a plot starts with a desperate Zoe (Lopez), whose internal clock is ticking into overtime. Tired of waiting for the perfect relationship, she decides to get artificially inseminated in order to start a family. She then meets Stan (O'Loughlin) and the two completely hit it off. Zoe might have found her one and only, but is that one and only ready for fatherhood?

A Surprisingly Poignant Rom-Com

Kudos are in order for an early 2010s film about artificial insemination and its surrounding cultural questions. Jennifer Lopez is an icon in more ways than one, including her romcom lead prowess . While Alex O'Loughlin may perhaps be better known for his stint as Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-0 , he manages to bring his comedic genre-mashing chops to the role. While the premise is fresh, the momentum of this film can be a bit still at times, its ending is far worth the wait.

What Women Want (2000)

What Women Want is a classic pairing of rivals to relations. In it, Mel Gibson plays chauvinist advertising exec Nick Marshall who, after a freak accident with a blow dryer, is suddenly able to eavesdrop on women's thoughts. Having recently lost a promotion and with his company looking to conquer the more feminine market, he uses this newfound skill to his advantage to listen in on his new boss, Darcy Maguire (Helen Hunt). Of course, this causes him to fall hard for her in the process. Between repairing his relationships with his female co-workers (and his young daughter) and coming up with the perfect ad campaign to impress his bosses, he takes full advantage of this newfound gift for as long as it lasts.

A Formula that Works

Acclaimed filmmaker Nancy Meyers is at her best in this film, as are Hunt and Gibson. Both actors were at the top of their game at the time, and their onscreen chemistry is absolutely electric. The message of empathy for one's fellow man (or woman, in this case), is hard to deny. Marshall's behavior is shown to stem from his upbringing in a casino, an insight that might otherwise have been lost in less adept hands. There's a formulaic nature to this film, yes, but it only serves to punctuate the story and its message all the more.

The 10 Most Underrated Performances In Romance Movies Of All Time

Penelope (2006).

Release Date March 1, 2006

Director Mark Palansky

Cast Ronni Ancona, Nick Prideaux, Michael Feast, Richard E. Grant, Christina Ricci, Catherine O'Hara

Runtime 101

Genres Romance, Comedy, Fantasy

Penelope tells the story of a family cursed by the decisions of their ancestors to not accept a pair of young lovers. In the present day, Penelope (Christina Ricci), an aristocratic heiress, is born with a pig snout as a result. The only way to break the curse is to find her true love, someone who will wholeheartedly accept her, snout and all. Her well-meaning, but utterly misguided parents hide her from the world for years... that is until, sometime after her 18th birthday, when they decide to take her love life into their own hands. Their attempts to set her up with a fellow blueblood, however, go horribly awry, leading Penelope to strike off on her own in search of acceptance.

Elevated by a Brilliant Ensemble Cast

Released during the height of fable fantasy fervor, this modern take on classic fairy tale tropes is nothing short of delightful. There is a message of acceptance hidden deep beneath the overtures of classism. Plus, this cast reads like an understated who's who, from Catherine O'Hara as Penelope's mother, to James McAvoy as a kind, but subterfuging suitor, to Peter Dinklage and Reese Witherspoon as newfound friends Penelope finds along the way. And, with a PG rating, the film is wholesome enough to binge with some younger loved ones in tow.

Ball of Fire (1941)

Ball of Fire is a classic screwball comedy featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper. The story centers around a group of bachelors (and one widower) who live and work together in a prim and proper pad. Desperate to understand and learn some more modern colloquialisms to add to the work, the youngest of them, Professor Potts, a grammarian in American slang, turns to Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea for advice. A nightclub performer by trade, she only agrees to stay after finding herself on the run from police as a result of her mob boyfriend's shenanigans. The pair, of course, take a liking to each other, but are forced to put their feelings aside momentarily for the sake of the book and their lives after Sugarpuss' angry boyfriend comes a'calling.

A Screwball Comedy that Stands the Test of Time

This title perfectly encapsulates Stanwyck's character, a firecracker with a silver tongue for 'modern' American colloquialisms. Obvious references to the fable of Snow White aside, this juxtaposition of stuffiness and flamboyance makes for some incredible screwball shenanigans. The chemistry between the two leads is rife, though they are at times outmatched by those of their academic companions. A common matter in romantic comedies, the couple's attempts to save each other are of course what ultimately keep them apart for so long. Viewers will have to refrain from yelling at the screen for some more open and honest communication, which really would have solved just about all the woes of these two lovebirds to begin with.

Best Classic Screwball Comedies, Ranked

The wedding singer (1988), the wedding singer.

Release Date February 13, 1998

Director Frank Coraci

Cast Ellen Albertini Dow, Allen Covert, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Glave, Christine Taylor, Adam Sandler

The Wedding Singer features Adam Sandler as Robbie and Drew Barrymore as Julia, two features of the wedding circuit who are just perfect for each other. The only problem? Both of them are already engaged... to other people. That is until Robbie is dumped at the altar by his fiancé, who fell in love with his rock star persona and just can't stomach his new career as a wedding singer. This puts an obvious damper on both his personal and professional life as his gigs turn more and more sour. What follows is the ultimate will-they-won't-they as the newfound work pair finds their feelings for each other growing in spite of or because of their current and ex-spouses to be.

Irresistible Chemistry Between Sandler and Barrymore

This one is a classic on must-watch weekend re-runs for a reason. An early pairing between Sandler and Barrymore, it's no wonder after watching this film why they would go on to star alongside each other in so many more films. This film is easily one of Sandler's all-time best comedies, with just the right mix of oddball to offset the otherwise romantic tropes. Set in the '80s with the costumes and soundtrack to match, this film has an understated realness of work relationships amid the ridiculousness of wedding day jams. Plus, it's a chance to check out the comedic stylings of the always hilarious Ellen Albertini Dow as Rosie.

Every Day (2018)

Based on the novel by David Levithan, Every Day follows the love story between 16-year-old Rhiannon (Angourie Rice), who falls in love with the mysterious 'A' (who is played by far too many actors to list here). 'A', you see, is a traveling spirit, an entity that wakes up in a different living teenage body, regardless of gender, every day. Rhiannon first meets 'A' when they wake up in the body of Justin, her otherwise neglectful boyfriend. A day spent alongside her, of course, causes 'A' to fall madly in love with her, which leads them to seek her out long after he leaves her boyfriend behind. Upon learning his secret, Rhiannon is challenged to fall and stay in love with someone whose gender-fluid, outward-facing form is forever in flux.

A Romance with Philosophical Undertones

This film does a stellar job of creating purpose for the characters in a cohesive narrative, it also manages to sneak in a handful of ethical conundrums, mostly centering around the agency of 'A' as they take over the lives of others. The bodies 'A' possess do not usually remember their previous day(s) spent taken over by 'A'. This begs the question of whether it is fair for 'A' to exist in others, especially when they take over bodies for an extended period of time, living their lives for them. The answer is, in a word no, a sad fact that both Rhiannon and 'A' both come to accept after time. Thankfully, 'A' manages to use their powers for good, for the most part, and still manages to leave an indelible impact on the lives they briefly possess.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

The time traveler's wife.

Release Date August 14, 2009

Director Robert Schwentke

Cast Bart Bedford, Katherine Trowell, Alex Ferris, Eric Bana, Arliss Howard, Michelle Nolden

Runtime 107

Genres Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Documentary, Fantasy

There's nothing like a bit of time travel to up the stakes for romance. The Time Traveler's Wife stars Eric Bana as the traveler in question, Henry DeTamble, and Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire, his wife. Based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel, the film follows DeTamble's entrances and exits into Clare's life, which is the result of an uncontrollable para-genetic disorder. As a result, he travels back and forth between different important moments of his life without notice. Unable to change much about them, he struggles to develop a relationship with the love of his life, for whom his sudden appearances and reappearances throughout the course of her life eventually take their toll.

Another Sci-Fi-Tinged Romance

There is a graceful fluidity to this romance in what might otherwise have been marred with overwrought science-fiction explanations. While it is at first unsettling to watch DeTamble meet up with his wife in her pre-pubescent years and beyond, their involvement over time serves to both bond them together and tear them apart. There is an uneasy feeling of knowing what will pass, reliving old memories in real-time, and not being able to spend moments in said real-time with the ones you love. The mystery of not knowing when and where the main character will appear and reappear makes for some brilliant dramatic moments, which are only punctuated further by the unknown of just when they might happen.

20 Timeless Romance Movies That Never Get Old

Overboard (1987).

Overboard is an '80s comedy classic. Starring real-life partners Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, this film follows a bratty socialite (Hawn) who loses her memory after falling overboard her yacht. The repair person she recently fired, Russell, comes to her aid but decides to use her loss to his advantage. Claiming to be her husband, he brings her home from the hospital to take care of his brood of rambunctious boys in their stuffed to the seams house. What will happen when she falls wise to his ploy? Will she stay 'married' and give up her former lifestyle? Or abandon this strange man and his family altogether. This film, which was remade in 2018 , is available on YouTube alongside the remake.

A Strange Premise that Has Aged Surprisingly Well

While the concept in this film is undoubtedly alarming, there is a deftness to the handling of this gaslighting plot. This is due, in part, to the skill of screenwriter Leslie Dixon, who would go on to create even more cult favorites like Mrs. Doubtfire just a few years later. The chemistry between Russell and Hawn, as well as their ability to play so well off of each other comedically, is why this film stands out as so crazily re-watchable years later, Stockholm syndrome and all. By some magic of filmmaking, both Russell's character and that of his rambunctious brood, seem to somehow, inexplicably, grow on the viewer with each watch.

A Walk to Remember (2002)

The iconic teen drama A Walk to Remember is based on an early Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. The film stars Shane West as Landon and Mandy Moore as Jamie. What starts out as a classic '50s Romeo and Juliet story meets 10 Things I Hate About You takes a hard turn into reality as forces beyond their control serve to push them apart. Will Jamie's illness push them apart? Love, understanding, and passion are constants as they navigate their youth with what time they have left.

A Timeless Tearjerker

There's nothing like young love and a coming-of-age romance, particularly when that film is as highly rewatchable as this one is. Melodramatic to its core, A Walk to Remember features iconic performances by both Shane West and Mandy Moore in one of her earliest roles. Moore's musical performance is expected, but stellar. Perhaps more poignant for fans of tearjerkers are their matrimonial scenes. Be prepared to break out the tissues for this one.

Want More Romance Like A Walk to Remember ?

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment

The Tearsmith : The Biggest Differences Between The New Dark Romance Movie and Bestselling Book

The new film, now streaming on Netflix, is based off of Erin Doom's Italian bestseller of the same name

Rebecca Aizin is an Editorial Assistant at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared on Elle, HGTV and Backstage. 

Ready for the next Twilight ?

Erin Doom's Italian bestseller The Tearsmith has arrived stateside to give the popular franchise a run for its money. The spine-tingling romance story follows Nica and Rigel, both orphans at The Grave who are adopted by the same family. While Nica is as naive and innocent as a harmless butterfly, Rigel is often compared to the volatility of a wolf.

Unbeknownst to Nica, Rigel has been harboring an undying love for her since the day she stepped into the orphanage at 5 years old. Though she's terrified of his aggressive nature, Nica can't help but be intrigued by Rigel's hidden vulnerability and a bond begins to form between the two — hindered only by the fact that they're about to be siblings.

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Now adapted into a movie streaming on Netflix, The Tearsmith , which was filmed in Italian with English subtitles, is spreading to new audiences looking for their next romantic fix.

Here's everything to know about the differences between the book and the movie adaptation. Some light spoilers ahead, for those who haven't yet discovered the magic of either version.

The abusive matron is still at the orphanage

In the book, Nica and Rigel often talk about their complicated history with the matron from their childhood, Margaret Stoker. While Nica was brutally abused by the matron, Rigel was her favorite and the only child spared from her abuse — which only exacerbated his feelings of isolation and shame.

In the movie, the same relationship with the matron exists, but unlike the book where she was replaced by Mrs. Fridge when Nica was 12, Margaret was still the matron when Nica and Rigel were adopted.

Nica and Rigel's relationship developed more quickly in the movie

Netflix/Youtube

The novel is a whopping 550 pages and it isn't until around halfway through that a physical relationship starts between Nica and Rigel, after much tension and build-up. However, given the runtime of the movie is an hour and 45 minutes, the relationship is sped along much faster onscreen.

Rigel is prone to headaches and severe fevers and, early in the book, he experiences a fever that causes him to pass out, leaving Nica to take care of him while their adoptive parents are out of town. While the same scene happens in the movie, it is also the first time Nica and Rigel get together physically — whereas in the book, Rigel is asleep and Nica merely sees his vulnerability for the first time.

Chaos ensues at a school dance rather than at a party

There is a raving animosity between Lionel, who has a romantic interest in the clueless Nica, and Rigel, who doesn't trust his rival (and let's face it, he's jealous). In the book, the rivalry culminates in the final scene where Rigel and Lionel get into a massive fight.

However, in the movie, it all comes to a head during the climax of the film at the school dance — which does not happen in the book. Instead, a similar chaotic scene happens when Nica attends Lionel's party, where a drunk Lionel is aggressive toward her.

At the dance, Lionel is the sober one while Rigel fends off an inebriated Nica. A near-fatal incident that occurs at the end of the book happens directly after this scene — after Nica and Rigel have sex for the first time (which is also not when it happens in the book!).

Though Asia is a minor character in the book, she is important to the story as Nica stands up to her and proves that she's not there to replace her adoptive parents' deceased son, Alan, but rather to bring them new joy. Asia, who was in love with Alan before his death, has a hard time accepting her and is brusque and rude to her.

In the film adaptation, Asia's character is the same but she is not developed and is only in two scenes: the initial scene where she reacts poorly to Nica's presence and the final scene where she accepts Nica. Her friendship with Adeline is ignored and her story as a law student (and Adaline's love story) is also not portrayed in the film.

The story has a somewhat different ending

The plot still ends with Nica testifying against Margaret (but no spoilers on the outcome of that testimony!), but it's in a slightly different, more condensed order than the book.

In the book, Nica sits by a comatose Rigel's side for months, telling him stories and attempting to rouse him.

How this dark fairytale come to end? You'll just have to read—and watch—to find out.

Related Articles

• తెలుగు

Romantic Review: Neither Holds Logic Nor Plays Magic

Movie: Romantic Rating: 2/5 Banner: Puri Connects Cast: Akash Puri, Ketika Sharma, Ramya Krishna, Uttej, Sunaina, and others Music: Sunil Kashyap Editor: Junaid Siddiqui Director of Photography: Naresh Rana Producers: Puri Jagannadh, Charmme Kaur Story, screenplay, dialogues: Puri Jagannadh Directed by: Anil Paduri Release Date: October 29, 2021

From Prabhas to Rajamouli, top names have come forward to promote “Romantic”, the latest film starring Akash Puri, director Puri Jagannadh’s son. No wonder that the film has created a lot of buzz in the last two weeks.

With high-pitched publicity and an interesting trailer, “Romantic” has managed to garner attention. The film is here. Let’s analyze. 

Story: Set in Goa, the story begins with the voiceover of a police officer Ramya Gowarikar (Ramya Krishna), who narrates the intense and greatest love she had witnessed in her stint there. 

Vasco Da Gama (Akash Puri), whose police officer’s father was killed on duty, has only one aim – to earn big money so that he can run a charity foundation for his grandmother Mary (Rama Prabha). He quickly joins the gang of smugglers.

When his boss gets killed in a shootout, Vasco Da Gama becomes rich, but the police are chasing him. Meanwhile, the young boy is floored by the irresistible local beauty Monica (Ketika Sharma).

Ramya Gowarikar arrests Vasco Da Gama in a case, and he gets a life sentence in that case. What will happen to his love story with Monica?

Artistes’ Performances: Akash Puri still possesses boyish looks. Though he is sincere in his effort and tries playing the gangster part convincingly, the role is too big for the young boy to carry on his shoulders. He looks convincing in part, where he has to express feelings when he sees the charming beauty of Ketika Sharma. But when he mouths dialogues like mass heroes do, he looks unconvincing.

Ketika Sharma will surely skip the heartbeat of youngsters. Her unabashed display of skin and beautiful face will strike a chord with the target audiences. The romantic (lustful) moments of Akash Puri and Ketika Sharma are aimed at the galleries.

Ramya Krishna, who essays a poorly written character, brings a lot of dignity to otherwise incoherent proceedings. Sunaina’s comedy is okay. Uttej’s role is unconvincing.

Technical Excellence: The film is entirely shot in Goa, and the cinematographer captures the locations beautifully. More than the locations, the cameraman films the figure of Ketika Sharma captivatingly.

Music is a mixed bag. Dialogues written by Puri Jagannadh stand out. 

Highlights: Ketika Sharma’s skin show Puri’s mark dialogues

Drawback: Illogical Plot No rhyme and reason Lack of emotional connect

Analysis “Romantic” is directed by newcomer Anil Paduri, a long-time associate of Puri Jagannadh. But the film has a stamp of Puri Jagannadh’s direction throughout because he has written the story, screenplay, and dialogue. By the end of the film, we may wonder what the story is about.

Is this story about two young lovers who don’t know the difference between love and lust, like and desire? Or is it about a young boy’s ill fate as he attempts to be a godfather?

The protagonist is presented as a typical Puri Jagannadh’s reckless hero, who mouths Hindi dialogues laced with philosophical quotations, who wants to do ‘it’ with his girl ‘tonight’, and one who is either busy 'pattukovadam’ (touching) of guns and girl.

However, the hero has two objectives- one is to earn money and do some good for his locality and the other is to get the love of the girl he wants.

There is an entire song about the boy and girl talking or singing lines from Puri Jagannadh’s musings (his philosophical podcasts). While the song is beautiful to watch, it adds nothing to the main plot. Such is the aimlessness of this film.

“Desanni Preminchadam Easy Paisa Kharchu Undadu…Ammaini Premiste Sarada Teerchestadi,” says the hero in one scene saying he has not loved the girl yet. 15 or 20 minutes later, he says he can’t live without the girl. While one-liners sound good on paper, they don’t go well with the flow of the narrative. 

Plus, the climax leaves us in utter disappointment. 

So, what works in the film? The picturization of intense romantic moments between Ketika Sharma and Akash Puri. The girl is strikingly beautiful. Akash also is believable in romancing the girl than firing the bullets. 

All said, “Romantic” is a true-blue Puri Jagannadh’s film that doesn’t rely on logic or proper story, but the characterization of the hero and heroine romance. It may appeal to a mass audience, but the film is not at all engrossing. 

Bottom-line: Girl and Gun

For exciting updates on national affairs and up-to-date news click here on India Brains

• Geethanjali Malli Vachindi Review: No Scares, Little Laughs
• Manjummel Boys Review: Riveting Survival Thriller
• The Family Star Review: Star Doesn't Twinkle

Tags: romantic Romantic Movie Review Romantic Review Romantic Rating Romantic Movie Rating

ADVERTISEMENT

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, digital standard + weekend, digital premium + weekend.

Today's FT newspaper for easy reading on any device. This does not include ft.com or FT App access.

• 10 additional gift articles per month
• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• Videos & Podcasts
• FT App on Android & iOS
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Premium newsletters
• Weekday Print Edition
• FT Weekend newspaper delivered Saturday plus standard digital access
• FT Weekend Print edition
• FT Weekend Digital edition
• FT Weekend newspaper delivered Saturday plus complete digital access
• Everything in Preimum Digital

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Everything in Print
• Everything in Premium Digital

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy

Subscribe Us

• _Cinema Info
• Short Films
• Upcoming and News

Premalu (2024) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - A Heartwarming Romantic Comedy

Table Of Content

Premalu (2024) Review: A Heartwarming Malayalam Rom-Com with Sinhala Subtitles and English Subtitles.

"Premalu" (2024) captivates audiences with its refreshing take on love, friendship, and self-discovery, delivering a heartwarming cinematic experience that lingers long after the credits roll. Directed by Girish A. D. and co-written with Kiran Josey, this Malayalam romantic comedy presents a compelling narrative enriched by stellar performances, engaging storytelling, and vibrant cinematography. 

Also, there is a reference to the movie Hridayam in the movie. You can get Hridayam (2022) Sinhala subtitles from subscenelk. 

At the heart of the film lies Sachin Santhosh, portrayed with sincerity and charm by Naslen K. Gafoor. Sachin's journey from unrequited love to unexpected encounters in Hyderabad forms the crux of the plot, offering viewers a relatable protagonist grappling with life's uncertainties. Mamitha Baiju shines as Reenu, Sachin's love interest, infusing the character with depth and authenticity. Their on-screen chemistry is palpable, drawing viewers into their tumultuous yet endearing relationship.

Supporting performances from Sangeeth Prathap, Shyam Mohan, and Akhila Bhargavan add layers to the narrative, enriching each scene with humor and emotion. The ensemble cast seamlessly blends into the vibrant tapestry of Hyderabad's cultural landscape, enhancing the film's authenticity and charm.

Girish A. D.'s direction exhibits finesse, balancing poignant moments with lighthearted humor. The screenplay, co-written by Kiran Josey, navigates through the intricacies of romance with grace, offering glimpses into the characters' inner worlds while keeping the narrative brisk and engaging. The film's pacing ensures that each scene contributes to the overall arc, culminating in a satisfying conclusion that leaves a lasting impact.

Visually, "Premalu" is a treat for the senses, with Ajmal Sabu's cinematography capturing the essence of Hyderabad's bustling streets and scenic locales. The vibrant color palette and dynamic camera work breathe life into every frame, enhancing the film's visual appeal and immersive experience.

Vishnu Vijay's musical score complements the narrative beautifully, evoking a range of emotions that resonate with viewers long after the film ends. From poignant melodies to peppy tracks, the soundtrack enriches the storytelling, serving as a cohesive thread that ties the film together.

Despite its familiar premise, "Premalu" distinguishes itself through its nuanced character development and genuine portrayal of relationships. The film explores themes of love, friendship, and personal growth with sincerity, offering viewers a poignant reflection of life's joys and challenges.

In conclusion, "Premalu" (2024) is a delightful romantic comedy that leaves a lasting impression with its endearing characters, engaging storyline, and memorable performances. Girish A. D.'s directorial prowess shines through, reaffirming his status as a master storyteller. Whether you're a fan of Malayalam cinema or simply in search of a heartwarming tale, "Premalu" promises an enchanting journey that will tug at your heartstrings and leave you smiling.

Premalu (2024) Sinhala Subtitle & Cast: Dive into the Ensemble of Characters in this Romantic Comedy!

Unlocking the genius behind premalu (2024): meet the crew behind the scenes, unraveling romance: premalu (2024) plot explained.

Premalu (2024) Box Office Triumph: ₹139 Crore Worldwide Gross with Stellar Ratings!

--------------- Premalu (2024) Sinhala Subtitle SRT - SSA  ------------

Posted by: Nishshanka Ruwan

Post a comment.

If the download link no longer works, please notify us at [email protected] , or contact us through the links on the contact page.

Social Plugin

Popular posts.

The Walking Dead The Ones Who Live (2024) S01 Sinhala Subtitle and Review - AMC's New Series

Damsel (2024) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - Princess Elodie's Dark Fantasy Adventure

Salaar Part 1 Ceasefire (2023) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - Cast and Crew

Hi Nanna (2023) Sinhala Subtitle and Review – A Cinematic Journey of Love and Redemption

Avatar The Way of Water 2022 Sinhala Subtitle & Cast, Crew, Review.

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - A Martial Arts Masterpiece for All Ages

Perilloor Premier League (2024) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - Cast and Crew

Anweshippin Kandethum (2024) Sinhala Subtitle and Review - Plot, Cast, Production & Box Office

KGF Chapter 2 (2022) Sinhala subtitle & Review

• Adventure 13
• Ancient Alien Season 04 10
• Ancient Alien Season 05 12
• Ancient Alien Season 07 8
• Ancient Alien Season 08 9
• Ancient Alien Season 09 12
• Ancient Alien Season 10 1
• Ancient Aliens Season 03 16
• Ancient Aliens Season 06 11
• Anthology 4
• Biographical 5
• Black Comedy 1
• Cardinal S01 6
• Cardinal Season 01 6
• Cinema Info 1
• Cinema World 1
• Coming-of-age 1
• Documentary 66
• Espionage 1
• Gangster film 10
• God story 4
• Godless season 01 7
• Historical 13
• Malayalam 75
• Melodrama 1
• Mini Drama Series 4
• musical satire 1
• Other Languages 1
• period fiction film 4
• political 11
• Political Drama 3
• political satire 6
• pseudohistory 2
• psychological 5
• psychological drama film 4
• road movie 1
• Romantic 42
• satire film 3
• satirical 2
• science fiction 6
• Short Films 9
• Single Character Film 1
• Thisara Darshana Withana 2
• Tyrant Season 03 11
• Viking Season 05 10
• Vikings Valhalla S02 1

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

There is a fantasy scene in "Romance" where a woman's body is divided by a wall. On one side, from the waist down, she is in a brothel. On the other side, from the waist up, in a delivery room. What is the message of the scene? Don't be too sure you know. I know I don't. It isn't some kind of simplistic message linking childbirth with misuse by men. The woman having the fantasy isn't really against the activities on either side of the wall. Maybe the scene is intended as an illustration of her own confusion about sex.

The woman's name is Marie ( Caroline Ducey ). She could be the woman Freud was thinking about when he confessed he could not answer the question, "What do women want?" Marie asks herself the same question. She wants something, all right. She is unhappy with her boyfriend Paul, who refuses to sleep with her, and unhappy, too, with the sexual adventures she has. It's like there's a disconnect between her body and her identity. She does things that sometimes make her feel good, but she doesn't feel good because she has done them.

"Romance," written and directed by Catherine Breillat , became notorious on the festival circuit this autumn because it is an intelligent, radical film by a woman, and at the same time it contains explicit nudity and, as nearly as we can tell, actual sex. It is not arousing or pornographic, because the sex isn't presented in an erotic way; it's more like a documentary of a dogged woman's forced march toward orgasm, a goal she is not sure she values. Marie narrates the film herself and also seems to be reading pages from her journal; she is baffled by herself, baffled by men, baffled by sex. Even after climax, her hand closes on air.

Of course the film is French. It is said that for the French, wine takes the place of flirting, dining takes the place of seduction, smoking takes the place of foreplay and talking takes the place of sex. "Romance" is so analytical that you sometimes get the feeling Marie is putting herself through her sexual encounters simply to get material for her journal. These poor guys aren't lovers, they're case studies.

And yet the film has an icy fascination. Perhaps it is a test of how men and women relate to eroticism on the screen. I know few men who like it much (sure proof it is not pornographic). Women defend it in feminist terms, but you have the strangest feeling they're not saying what they really think. At a screening at the Toronto Film Festival there was some laughter, almost all female, but I couldn't tell if it was nervous, or knowing.

Perhaps the sex content gets in the way, causing our old tapes to play. When we see a stud on the screen (like Rocco Siffredi , in real life an Italian porno actor famous for one very good reason), we go into porno mode and expect to see--well, what we usually see. But "Romance" doesn't have that mode. Marie relates to Paolo (Siffredi's character) as if he is a laboratory specimen. So this is the famous white rat she has heard so much about. Can he bring her pleasure? Is it perhaps a matter of physical endowment? And what about Robert ( Francois Berleand ), who offers to tie her up? He is an ordinary man, not handsome, not exciting, but he has all the necessary equipment and skills, and when he makes his offer, she agrees, as if he is a guide at Disney World suggesting one more ride she should try before leaving the park. Does she like bondage? She goes back for more. Perhaps it is not the sexual side that pleases her, but the fact that when Robert is arranging his ropes and restraints, at least he is thinking about her.

There is a scene in the movie that looks like rape, but is it? She more or less invites the stranger who mistreats her. She wants--well, she wants to take a chance, and then she finds out she didn't like it. So she's defiant toward the guy, but it's not anger at how he treated her, it's triumph that she feels undefeated. Later, there is a gynecological examination--perhaps the creepiest scene in the movie, as interns line up for their turn.

I did not really enjoy this movie, and yet I recommend it. Why? Because I think it's on to something interesting. Movies buy the whole romantic package, lock, stock and barrel. People look great, fall in love and have wonderful sex. Even intelligent characters in smart movies all seem to think more or less the same way while they're in the sack. Erogenous autopilot takes over. Here is a movie about a woman who never stops thinking. That may not be as good for you as it is for her.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Arthur the King

Remembering Gene Wilder

Matt zoller seitz.

Simon Abrams

Glenn Kenny

Tomris Laffly

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Christy lemire, film credits.

Romance (1999)

Rated NR Nudity, Strong Sexuality, Sex

103 minutes

Rocco Siffredi as Paolo

Caroline Ducey as Marie

Sagamore Stevenin as Paul

Francois Berleand as Robert

Written and Directed by

• Catherine Breillat

Latest blog posts

O.J. Simpson Dies: The Rise & Fall of A Superstar

Which Cannes Film Will Win the Palme d’Or? Let’s Rank Their Chances

Second Sight Drops 4K Releases for Excellent Films by Brandon Cronenberg, Jeremy Saulnier, and Alexandre Aja

Wagner Moura Is Still Holding On To Hope