

Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy (Chris Geere) hook up in the first episode of You’re the Worst after begrudgingly attending a wedding.

But it leads to flirtation, then sexual attraction, and then possibly genuine feeling, raising the question: Can a man love a woman when the woman is not real? If conventional rom-coms overlook the concerns and emotions a real woman might express, this one took that a step further by cutting out the real woman altogether, and showing us how impossible it is to exist in a partnership when one partner isn’t fully present. In Her, the meet-cute between Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson) is really a voice-only encounter between a man and his Siri or Alexa. (See: 1984’s Electric Dreams.) But Spike Jonze imagines the romantic possibilities in a more modern, richly constructed, deep, absurd, and sobering narrative that’s just right for these digitally dominated times.
Best anime of 2017 comedy romance movie#
Season two available to stream at .Ī movie in which a piece of technology falls in love with a human? Yeah, that’s been done before. Season one available to stream on Netflix. But the sharp honesty of the song-and-dance numbers - “Settle for Me,” the breakup ode “It Was a Shit Show,” the delusional “We’ll Never Have Problems Again” - and the romantic disappointments that befall every character are confirmation that what’s actually crazy are the fairy tales and rom-coms that brainwashed Rebecca Bunch in the first place.
Best anime of 2017 comedy romance series#
Of course, protagonist Rebecca Bunch, played by the unceasingly energetic Rachel Bloom, is emotionally unstable and, as the series begins, willing to do anything to snag her man of choice, including spontaneously moving all the way across the country. “When you call her crazy, you’re just calling her in love.” That’s a line from the season-two theme song for this daffy and savage musical rom-com, and it’s a fair summary of what Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is about: the wrongheaded idea, often perpetuated by romantic comedies, that women are emotionally unstable and willing to do anything to snag a man. There’s room for all of them on our list of the best romantic comedies of the past ten years. Most of all, though, the romantic comedy in 2017 is not just one thing: Projects like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Lobster delight in twisting rom-com tropes, while movies like The Proposal and Silver Linings Playbook prove there’s more than one way to play them straight. And while there are still plenty of projects about good-looking white people falling in love in New York, the explosion of creative outlets available has also led to new voices and new kinds of romances. Happy endings, too, have given way to bittersweet conclusions and melancholy. Glossy candlelit love scenes are out, replaced by rawer and more naturalistic depictions of sex. On television and in film, creators have been granted the freedom to upend traditional expectations for the genre. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vultureĭespite reports to the contrary, the romantic comedy is not dead.
