The 25 greatest romantic comedies ever
Filled with weddings, sardonic best friends and an abundance of Julia Roberts, these are the greatest romcoms of all time – ranked by Adam White from 25 to 1
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter
I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy
The metaphorical birthplace of Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan and tubs of ice cream eaten sadly on the sofa, the romantic comedy has survived cliche, shifting cultural mores and Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. It remains one of the most important and emotionally essential film genres in existence. And that’s despite almost all of them being exactly the same. And a staggering amount of them being awful.
To compile the genre’s 25 best, it was important to maintain strict criteria: a romantic comedy must build to a final rush of feeling and close on a kiss (that means no Working Girl, people!), and the central romance must be the primary hook for the entire film (that means no Clueless or Legally Blonde, nerds!).
The usual rules of “good filmmaking” don’t necessarily need to apply, either. The best romcoms are an immaculate fusion of perceptive storytelling, great humour and chemistry in spades. Sometimes, though, you just want to watch pretty actors flirting in immaculate surroundings. Because, truthfully, we’re all just a bunch of lovesick romantics, standing in front of a television set and/or cinema screen, asking to watch beautiful people fall in love.
Did your favourite make the list?
25. Pretty Woman (1990)
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: Pretty Woman sports a sleaziness so disquieting that it’s no real surprise to learn the film was originally planned to be a gritty sex work drama that ended in tragedy. Thank Cupid for the rewrites, then. The Disney-fied Pretty Woman features Julia Roberts in pure star-is-born mode, her joyous pluck overpowering the film’s murkier elements. That the film’s ostensibly heroic leading man (Richard Gere) is an LA suit who hires an escort for the week is slightly maddening. That Pretty Woman somehow makes all of this ickiness romantic? Even more so.
24. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
The gross-out comedy boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s is one of the more fascinating minor genre trends in recent decades. The Farrelly brothers launched a cottage industry of films driven by cloying sentimentality and bodily functions. Most have aged poorly, butCameron Diaz’s sunny dream-girl radiance in There’s Something About Mary rescues the film from comic oblivion. She gives a daffy, entirely committed performance as the object of affection for a series of men each landing somewhere along a spectrum of depravity. It’s no wonder she became one of Hollywood’s biggest names in the aftermath.
Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman’ (Shutterstock)23. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Individual scenes from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes exist in cultural memory far more than the film does as a whole. There’s also a reason for that. Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is frothy, classic-Hollywood gorgeousness at its most primal, while her double act with Jane Russell is almost unfairly chic. But there’s additionally lovely sparkage to the film itself, its DNA found in many of the female-led comedies of the later 20th century. Monroe and Russell are scrappy, ambitious women desperate to marry rich, and the film has a surprisingly sex-positive and self-aware quality to it that feels quietly radical for 1953. Casting dullards as the pair’s respective love interests makes total sense – these are women who could eat stupid men for breakfast, and the film knows it.
22. Get Over It (2001)
The most under-the-radar masterpiece of the US teen-movie boom that kicked off in the late Nineties – and drew to a close shortly around Get Over It’s release – this is essentially a “greatest hits” movie pulling from all that was popular back then. You’ve got a Shakespeare parody (the plot here is inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a sexually excitable animal (it’s very Farrelly brothers), and a host of cameos from celebs of the moment (Sisqó! Carmen Electra! Short-lived pop queen Vitamin C!). Ben Foster is the recently dumped high-school basketball player who signs up for the school play to woo back his ex, only to fall for the adorable younger sister (Kirsten Dunst) of his best friend. Stealing the show is Martin Short as a flamboyant drama teacher. More people should know this film!
Marilyn Monroe in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (Shutterstock )21. Boomerang (1992)
The first Black, mainstream romantic comedy to possess the same aspirational sheen as its white counterparts, Boomerang is a lively battle-of-the-sexes comedy with Eddie Murphy as a womanising advertising executive spurned by his female doppelganger (Robin Givens). Grace Jones, Eartha Kitt and a young Halle Berry make for wonderful supporting players, but Boomerang’s secret weapon is Givens, who gives a performance with so much spark that it’s enraging her volatile marriage to Mike Tyson overshadowed much of her acting career.
20. Love Actually (2003)
Most great romcoms are lucky enough to have one standout set piece that becomes embedded in the cultural landscape. Love Actually, the annually inescapable Christmas romcom behemoth from Richard Curtis, has about six or seven. Because it’s as famous as it is, Love Actually oddly has a tendency to be underrated, dismissed as too cutesy or misogynist, too awkwardly Blairite in its politics. And all of that, in fairness, is true. But it’s also a real classic of the form – masterfully structured, endlessly watchable, and filled with familiar faces, sweet romances and heartache. It’s love in all its colours, often cringeworthy, sometimes monstrous, but always compelling to watch unfold.
19. But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
This satirical comedy set at a gay conversion camp has, quite clearly, a lot more than romance on its mind. But Jamie Babbit’s pink satin-coloured debut is most memorable for the brewing relationship between Clea DuVall’s Graham and Natasha Lyonne’s Megan. One is more in denial about their sexuality than the other, but they discover a mutual attraction while being held under the thumb of Cathy Moriarty’s conversion camp den mother – who, it should be said, is somehow more of a drag queen than her colleague (played by a de-glammed RuPaul).
18. Groundhog Day (1993)
It’s easy to forget that Groundhog Day is unashamedly romantic. At its heart is that incredible concept: Bill Murray’s obnoxious weatherman is stuck in a time loop, so takes the time to better himself. Surrounding said concept is a love story between Murray’s character and the TV producer who initially can’t stand him (Andie MacDowell), and how personal betterment makes every trial and tribulation somehow worthwhile.
Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in ‘Groundhog Day’ (Shutterstock )17. Bull Durham (1988)
Romcoms don’t typically depict sex – preferring either morning-after giggles or absolutely nothing carnal whatsoever. Then there’s Bull Durham, starring Susan Sarandon as a ludicrously sexy and free-spirited baseball groupie who picks one player to sleep with every game season. Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins are the two men Sarandon gets involved with, sparking a shaggy yet erotically charged tete-a-tete.
16. Say Anything… (1989)
Sometimes all it takes to forgive a romcom of its creepy undercurrent is a pair of beautiful movie stars with impeccable chemistry. In fairness, that occurs throughout the romantic comedy genre, but it’s especially noticeable in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything... This is a story about fixation and co-dependency and poor Ione Skye stuck in the middle of two incredibly needy men, but Crowe somehow makes Say Anything... strikingly romantic anyway. Skye and John Cusack are wonderful together; the film takes its time allowing us to fall in love with them just as they’re falling in love with each other. And that boombox scene is iconic for a reason.
15. Modern Romance (1981)
Sick of beautiful people falling in love in movies? Why not watch two beautiful people fall in love and then endlessly dissect their relationship to death? Modern Romance is practically an anti-romcom, writer, director and star Albert Brooks swimming in such narcissistic neurosis as a Los Angeles film editor that he makes Woody Allen look comparatively content. His film recognises love as completely toxic and unbearable when cast in a particular light, and few dark comedies have come close to matching its gnarly wit ever since.
14. The Wedding Singer (1998)
On paper, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore shouldn’t work so well together. They’re not quite opposites, with their comic zing not sourced from anything combative – as in most romcoms. Oddly, it’s their shared sensibilities that make them so transfixing on screen. Both are unabashedly sweet-natured, earnest and goofy movie stars who radiate heart. More than their middling reunion movie 50 First Dates or their woeful third go-around Blended, The Wedding Singer best captures their mutual affability. Soundtracked by an A to Z of 1980s pop classics, this is nostalgic, adorable and endlessly rewatchable.
Adam Sandler in ‘The Wedding Singer’ (Getty Images)13. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
It is funny in hindsight that there was such a stink over the casting of the Texan Renée Zellweger as the very English Bridget Jones. Because could you now imagine anyone else playing her? Her accent flawless (in that very prim, written-by-Richard-Curtis way), Zellweger similarly nails the spirited, neurotic melancholy that makes Bridget such a likeable character, despite all the reasons we probably wouldn’t be able to stand her in reality. Like most of Curtis’s work, there is a lovely comfort to Bridget Jones, full as it is of slapstick, silly jumpers and new-millennium London, featuring Colin Firth and Hugh Grant (as “adorable dork” and “magnificent bastard”, respectively), and a perfect Christmas finale.
12. Moonstruck (1987)
Cher won a surprising yet entirely deserved Oscar for her work here, playing a dowdy Brooklyn widow engaged to an incredibly boring man, who decides to transform herself after falling for her soon-to-be brother-in-law (Nicolas Cage). Moonstruck is a love story and a traditional romcom, but it’s also the story of a woman throwing herself into the unknown and abandoning the kind of life she once felt resigned to. It is big, broad and richly romantic, with a touch of magical whimsy thrown in too.
11. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
An underwritten female lead in the form of Andie MacDowell’s Carrie is the only fly in the ointment here. Revolving around a group of friends as they attend – you guessed it – four weddings and a funeral, this 1994 sleeper hit marked the first of many collaborations between Hugh Grant and screenwriter Richard Curtis. We can probably all agree that the hopeless, stuttering Charlie should have ended up with his best friend Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas), but without his devastating indifference towards her, we would never have been blessed with one of the most magnanimous displays of unrequited love ever committed to film. The film’s worth your time, too, for its quietly progressive, heart-wrenching gay subplot.
10. Roman Holiday (1953)
A perfect encapsulation of the Fifties, specifically the allure of the European jet set, the idealised rat-a-tat-tat magic of big-city journalists, and the otherworldly regality of Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday is more of a time machine than most of the films here. But it’s also a true-blue classic, its “famous woman paired with ordinary man” plot inspiring everything from Notting Hill to The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and appropriately beloved as a result. There’s no Hilary Duff, obviously, but we won’t hold that against it.
9. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Considering how many people adore My Best Friend’s Wedding, it’s always surprising to rediscover how monstrous its apparent heroine is. Julia Roberts has had better-received roles before and since, but there’s something fascinatingly daring about her work here, playing a single woman in love with her best friend and determined to destroy his wedding to a lovely if naive rich girl she has decided is evil. Cameron Diaz, as the bride-to-be, is an adorable revelation, Rupert Everett a hoot as Roberts’s then-radical “gay best friend”. And the sheer darkness on display here, mixed with that funny and expensive Nineties sheen, makes it one of the most intriguing romcoms in history, and secretly one of its very best.
Julia Roberts in ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ (Shutterstock )8. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Gut-wrenching to watch in the wake of Heath Ledger’s death, but still one of the smartest, most heartwarming comedies of the last 30 years. Ledger and Julia Stiles are a pair of “unappealing” high schoolers whose romance is engineered by Stiles’s younger sister, who can only date once she does. There is much to love here, from the film’s feminist politics (10 Things remains the holy grail of its era, in that regard) to its delightful supporting cast. But it’s Ledger and Stiles that burn the screen. Their chemistry is so authentic, charming and sexy that it’s almost uncomfortable to watch, with only the fact that they’re both ridiculously beautiful encouraging you to not once look away.
7. Annie Hall (1977)
We know. Where you stand onWoody Allen’s work, particularly the stuff not revolving around the apparent inability of young women to resist the allure of a scrawny, bespectacled middle-aged neurotic, is one of those endless pop culture conundrums we’ve attempted to decipher in recent years. If anything, though, watch Annie Hall for Diane Keaton at her most Diane Keatonish – daffy, stylish and impossibly cool, she becomes so much more than an idealised fantasy figure through sheer force of will.
6. The Apartment (1960)
Christmas has never been better presented in all its melancholy splendour than in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, in which two lonely souls left dispirited by the holiday season find one another. Jack Lemmon is unsurprisingly wonderful as one half of the film’s central twosome, who loans out his apartment to his lecherous bosses so they can conduct their affairs, but it is Shirley MacLaine who provides the film with its heart – she is bruised and brittle but eager for connection, and perfectly embodies the dizzying emotions of the winter season.
5. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
A fizzy treasure of a comedy that set the tone for much of what came after it, The Philadelphia Story casts a never-more-haughty Katharine Hepburn as an heiress stuck between three men: her dull fiance (John Howard), a prickly journalist (James Stewart) and the ex (Cary Grant) still hopelessly in love with her. Everyone speaks incredibly fast, romantic tribulations occur in elegant mansion estates, and the film’s central trio embody a vintage movie-star glamour you can’t help but begin to long for as soon as they appear on screen.
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in ‘The Philadelphia Story’ (Shutterstock )4. Notting Hill (1999)
Oh, isn’t this just perfect? The on-location filming. Rhys Ifans in his pants. Emma Chambers as a sweet-natured flibbertigibbet. That immaculate swoosh of Hugh Grant’s hair. Julia Roberts being so Julia Roberts that I feel as if I ought to write her name in capital letters here just to accurately capture the scale and power of her presence. Notting Hill, about a bookseller who falls in love with an A-list movie star who might as well be called Schmoolia Schmoberts, is the real apex of British romantic comedy, isn’t it? Incredibly funny, irresistibly gentle, and just burning with confidence, expense and Nineties, produced-by-Working-Title charm. You’d live in it if you could. Damn you, gentrification!
3. You’ve Got Mail (1998)
While Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s most famous prior romcom collaboration, 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle, has a dark melancholy that makes it less immediately pleasurable to watch, their 1998 reunion in You’ve Got Mail is the kind of movie built for comforting rewatches beneath a blanket. Or at least once every year at Christmas. The pair play sworn enemies waged in a war over the future of Ryan’s ludicrously serene independent bookshop, who simultaneously fall in love with one another when interacting anonymously online. Despite the dial-up modems and archaic dialogue (“What’s email?” everyone seems on the verge of asking), You’ve Got Mail hasn’t aged poorly, proving how timeless chemistry-driven love stories between beautiful movie stars can be. And considering how brilliant Ryan is here, oscillating between tough strength and soft vulnerability, it is no surprise that she is still regarded as the star most associated with the genre.
2. What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
This Peter Bogdanovich blockbuster is a full-speed collision of slapstick, romance and shocking sex appeal – has any couple been more attractive on screen than Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, before or since? The pair play unlikely allies who smash into one another at a San Francisco hotel – he’s an uptight businessman with a steady girlfriend, she’s a manic pixie dream woman who upends his life professionally, personally and psychologically. But, like, in a romantic way. Much like number one on this list, What’s Up, Doc? is more or less the blueprint for every madcap action-romance that came after it.
Meg Ryan in ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ (Shutterstock)1. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Truthfully, it couldn’t be anything else. Not only did When Harry Met Sally… kickstart the romcom boom that dominated the Nineties, it also invented much of what we recognise today as cliches: from the sardonic best friend (played to perfection by Carrie Fisher), to the late-night phone calls while watching old movies, the Christmas/New Year’s climax, the “neurotic Jew”/“Shiksa goddess” pairing at its centre, and the hilarious honesty when it comes to sex – never bettered than in the film’s standout diner-orgasm scene. Romantic comedies are only cliched because When Harry Met Sally… set such a glorious benchmark for why these films work in the modern era, assisted by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan at their most golden, and a gorgeously structured script that leaps through time, written by the queen of the genre herself, Nora Ephron. Nothing will ever better this.
During a breakfast meeting at the Invictus Games, Michael Harrod challenged the Duke of Sussex to share his best bad joke.
Read more >> : Cick here
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Bianca Censori and others allegedly believe Kanye West's online tirades and outrageous behaviors will 'pass.'
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
An interviewer got a strange vibe when she spoke to Sean 'Diddy' Combs. She shared why it felt like 'The Truman Show."
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Even days after the Kansas City Chiefs fell to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, fans still aren't over the Taylor Swift factor.
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Britney Spears answered fans' calls to give them, give them more, making her film debut in 2002's Crossroads. But did you know she was originally set to lead an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland?
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Bill Condon praised his leading lady, insisting "no else on Earth could have" pulled off the performance.
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were reportedly detained in January but the country's state-run media revealed this week they had been accused of security-related offences
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Nollywood actress Omotola Jalade Ekeinde shares a reflection on self-love and resilience while revealing how she came about her tummy scar.
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Sigourney Weaver stars in the Avatar movies.
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The One Direction star passed away in a shock accident last year
Read more >> : Cick here
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Twitter (X), Inc. was an American social media company based in San Francisco, California, which operated and was named for its flagship social media network prior to its rebrand as X. In addition to Twitter, the company previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service
Twitter (X) is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 619 million monthly active users worldwide. One of the most exciting features of Twitter (X) is the ability to see what topics are trending in real-time. Twitter trends are a fascinating way to stay up to date on what people are talking about on the platform, and they can also be a valuable tool for businesses and individuals to stay relevant and informed. In this article, we will discuss Twitter (X) trends, how they work, and how you can use them to your advantage.
What are Twitter (X) Worldwide Trends?
Twitter (X) Worldwide trends are a list of topics that are currently being talked about on the platform and also world. The topics on this list change in real-time and are based on the volume of tweets using a particular hashtag or keyword. Twitter (X) Worldwide trends can be localized to a Worldwide country or region or can be global, depending on the topic's popularity.
How Do Twitter (X) Worldwide Trends Work?
Twitter (X) Worldwide trends are generated by an algorithm that analyzes the volume of tweets using a particular hashtag or keyword. When the algorithm detects a sudden increase in tweets using a specific hashtag or keyword, it considers that topic to be trending.
Once a topic is identified as trending, it is added to the list of Twitter (X) Worldwide trends. The topics on this list are ranked based on their popularity, with the most popular topics appearing at the top of the list.
Twitter (X) Worldwide trends can be filtered by location or category, allowing users to see what topics are trending in their area or in a particular industry. Additionally, users can click on a trending topic to see all of the tweets using that hashtag or keyword.