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A hazy New York skyline. A dreamy, jazzy score. A floppy haired Brit in chunky glasses with a lopsided grin (Charlie, played by Robert Pattinson) spies a beautiful American (Emma, played by Zendaya) reading in a coffee shop. It's the perfect meet cute — you can almost see the shadows of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts on the screen. But here is where the romance and comedy end and the drama with a capital D begins. Because Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama is proud to be firmly, resolutely anti-romcom.
After the awkward, stammering meet cute, the string of joyful dates, the picturesque proposal, this perfect little love story takes a turn. In case you haven't heard, The Drama hinges around a major plot twist — the kind of plot twist designed to get the entire internet locked in fierce ethical debate. I won't spoil it, but Emma has a big, dark secret — and it's just about as aggressively shocking and morally confronting as it could be. Suddenly, after spending all of this time rooting for our two romantic leads, we find ourselves watching on in horror (and a bit of gawking, jaw-dropped delight) as their wedding plans descend into unhinged emotional chaos.
This is… dark.
This bold dismantling of the classic romcom is shocking — that is, if it would be shocking if wasn't already being done left, right and centre. Because it seems to me that just about every romantic comedy these days is staunchly anti romance. In fact, the general consensus seems to be that setting up the perfect, formulaic romcom then blasting it into a million razor sharp pieces is what audiences everywhere are crying out for.
Along with The Drama, we have Splitsville, an American “anti-romcom” that landed in UK cinemas last week. Penned by the film's stars Michael Angela Covino (who also directs) and Kyle Marvin, the film follows two ambivalent, half-hearted couples — one teetering on the edge of divorce (Covino and Adria Arjona), one in an open marriage as a pre-emptive measure (Marvin and Dakota Johnson). Because apparently, in the modern world, love and commitment aren't real and cheating is an inevitable conclusion to our perfunctory relationships. It's a depressing premise. After some wife and husband swapping, some open relationship experimentation and more than a few squabbles, the couples end up right back where they started — with their original partners and still just as emotionally tepid.
Then there's Oh, Hi, Sophie Brooks' 2025 not-so-romcom starring Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as a couple who take a romantic getaway that spirals into a hostage situation as Gordon's Iris ties up Lerman's Isaac in a desperate ultimatum to get him to commit already.
And there's more. Charli XCX is set to star in self-described anti-romcom Erupcja this year, a film that sees her blowing up her relationship with soon-to-be fiancé, Rob (Will Madden) while stuck in Warsaw, Poland. Netflix's Vladimir, like The Drama, had all the familiar romcom tropes and, like Oh, Hi! got very dark when Rachel Weisz's character ended up tying up her love interest. Just this week, Disney+ dropped its first look at Alice and Steve, another self-described “anti-romcom”, this one about besties whose relationship implodes when he stars dating her daughter.
Looking back a couple of years, and the anti-romcom was already bubbling away. Last year's Best Picture winner Anora set up all of the romcom tropes before exploding them in a madcap frenzy. 2020's cult hit Worst Person in the World was yet another film proud of disrupting the romcom formula with its basic trajectory of girl meets boy, girl leaves current partner, girl then decides neither were the sweeping romance she thought she wanted and girl ultimately decides to spend some time alone focusing on herself.
All of this begs the question: when did we all become so cynical that we can't stomach a classic, by-the-book romcom?
After all, there is still an appetite for love stories. The internet is filled with pleas to “bring back yearning”. But it seems that romance has been relegated to the schmaltzy period dramas (Bridgerton, Wuthering Heights) and teen rom-drams (The Summer I Turned Pretty). Which are, in all fairness, certainly delivering on longing looks, pining and heady romance. Nevertheless, there's a distinct lack of love in our comedies. Apparently, these days, we can only handle a love story that's weighed down with heaps of angst and trauma. Meanwhile, the unironic, light-hearted romcom has been replaced with cynicism and flippancy.
Consider us on the edge of our seats.
What is going on? Have we really all become too depressed, too disheartened, too cynical for a good old-fashioned romcom?
In case you didn't already know, the world is a bleak place, increasingly filled with hate-fuelled political extremism, climate crisis warnings, cost of living threats and mind-numbing, time-sucking social media addictions. To sum up, most of us don't feel great. And instead of giving us the fantasy of an escapist romcom, filmmakers are, it seems, turning to pessimism.
The Drama suggests that even the most perfect relationship is concealing some sort of profound darkness. Yes, it seems to say, those terrifying news headlines you can't escape on your phone? They will also weasel their way into the safety of your relationship.
Meanwhile, a film like Splitsville suggests that none of us really believe in the power of love anymore. Instead, we are all half-heartedly, mindlessly coupling up because it's slightly better than being alone — and, it turns out, it's also less complicated logistically than opening things up. No one is in love anymore, they are simply resigned to ambivalent partnerdom.
Then there's Oh, Hi, a portrait of modern relationships as transactional and desperate things, riddled with anxieties and doubt. No one feels strongly enough about other people to really commit. After all, if marriage is as bleak as it is in Splitsville or as dangerous as in The Drama, why bother?
For all of these filmmakers, the romcom format must have seemed inadequate to portray the real anxieties and worries of modern life and modern relationships. And it's a real shame. The classic romcom is all-too often written off as a silly, “girly” genre — a genre of romantic fantasy and unseriousness. But in the loss of the romcom, we see just how serious, how brave the romcom really is. It takes guts to unironically pin your sail to the mast of love — to make a film that is proudly, unironically romantic; a film that believes in hope; a film that doesn't rely on a cheap switch up or a cynical take down to make its point. Sure, there's a place for the anti-romcom — but perhaps, we need a few real romcoms now more than ever.
