Today’s romantic comedies rely on shortcuts, tropes, and shallow characters
Romantic comedies, or rom-coms, have been a staple genre in the film industry for years, with a golden age during the 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, however, audiences have noticed that this genre is missing the magic that once made them so special.
There are three main flaws found commonly in these newer Romcom iterations: the first being the dreaded montage, tropes and gimmicks, and overall lack of personality and individuality.
The first element that the montage works as a time skip, speeding over the parts of the plot where the characters deepen their love. In both My Oxford Year (2025), and The Idea of You (2024), the characters sleep together for the first time and then the film cuts to a montage. After the montage, there is some major change in their relationship that shapes the rest of the film. These characters are left distraught by these events, and their sudden deep emotional connection seems to come out of nowhere as the relationship has developed offscreen.
Anyone But You (2023) has a different, but familiar approach regarding the use of montages. After the love interests first meet, there is a montage where they go on a date and fall asleep together. Once again, the actual connection is created offscreen, and the audience is left to watch the fallout afterwards with no understanding of what has made these characters connect to one another.
The second element is tropes and gimmicks. None of these films are about normal people falling in love in normal places, instead audiences are presented with inappropriate relationships, such as in My Oxford Year, which houses a teacher-student relationship. This makes these films seem out of touch with reality that many viewers cannot relate to the characters or story.
This is where the third and final element comes in; there is an overall lack of personality and individuality in the characters of these films. Each character is given one hobby or defining trait but is rarely allowed in any room to possess traits outside of their mold. They might be a bookworm, a music lover, or profiled as a law school dropout, but besides that, these characters don’t have an extra dimension to them. Even lead characters have little to no identity outside of the plot; they only exist to progress the story from start to end. This creates characters that feel fabricated and shallow, with no real identity for audiences to relate to.
Montages replace emotional connection; tropes make the characters unrelatable, and the lack of individuality in characters makes them feel less human. Instead of showing viewers a deep connection between two people that can make them feel like love is possible, these films have become such a mess of tropes and desperate aesthetics that there is nothing of substance left to hold on to. Everything feels surface level and is purposefully made to create online chatter rather than to create a deep emotional experience.
While these films had their time in the spotlight, they haven’t left the lasting impression that many older films have been able to. If romantic comedy directors and writers can take one thing away from the classics, it’s that emotional depth and attention to detail are key in making a movie that lasts.
Graphic/Vlad latis
