Why Did Critics Hate Rom-Coms in the 2000s?

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The ad wizards who wrote that copy were certainly onto something when they created this memorable tagline, but Decider’s “Take Two” series was specifically formulated in a laboratory by the world’s foremost pop culture scientists to provide a second chance for movies that made a less than stellar first impression upon their original release.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone slammed it as a “by–the–numbers” movie “that studios grind out like toxic sausage.”

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian agreed that it was “awful,” adding that his “own ‘proposal’ to everyone involved is unprintable.”

And Wesley Morris at The Boston Globe bemoaned that it “hurts the eyes, the tummy, and the libido.”

The heinously offensive film being described by these top critics above is not, in fact, an unwatchable disaster, but the popular 2009 box office hit The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, which is happily rewatched by many on cable every year and brought up in interviews with Bullock and Reynolds to this day. Director Anne Fletcher and writer Peter Chiarelli may not have reinvented the wheel, but they made an enjoyable movie that has become a staple on every modern “best romantic comedies” list. Unfortunately, it was also a rom-com that came out in the 2000s. And after reading dozens of respected critics’ takes on popular films from that decade, it seems impossible to deny that most film reviewers really, really did not like romantic comedies in the 2000s.

Fletcher’s 2008 well-liked rom-com with Katherine Heigl, 27 Dresses, was “insipid,” said The Guardian. Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey’s under-two-hour love story from 2003, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, was “a chore to sit through,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jennifer Garner’s 2004 quotable classic, 13 Going on 30, was “pretty much devoid of comic spark” in the eyes of The A.V. Club. And Nancy Meyer’s 2006 Christmastime favorite, The Holiday was nothing more than “flat, featureless plastic,” according to The Washington Post.

It’s true that every movie has its haters and defenders. There were certainly top publications that published positive reviews of the aforementioned films. It’s also true that Rotten Tomatoes’ scores—which, for all the above-listed films, are 64 percent or below—should be taken with a grain of salt, especially in light of the recent Vulture exposé that the review aggregation website has been subject to deliberate manipulation. But for millennials like me, those movies represent a golden era of our favorite comfort watches. It’s no wonder that when the Decider staff was asked to pitch good movies we felt were unfairly maligned and deserved a second look—a Take Two, if you will—many of the thirty-something staff turned to 2000s romantic comedies. Why were these movies, so loved by so many today, so irritating to critics two decades prior?

Glenn Kenny—who was the lead film critic at the U.S. edition of Premiere magazine until the print edition folded in 2007, and now works freelance for publications like The New York Times, RogerEbert.com, and Decider—thinks the blame falls on the genre’s repetitive nature. “One reason that a lot of rom-coms didn’t get a lot of critical respect was because of a cookie-cutter feel of how they had a certain structure—a certain box-checking,” he told me. “There was not a lot of individuality to rom-coms.”

Miranda Bailey—a filmmaker whose producer credits include The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Swiss Army Man, and I Do… Until I Don’t—has a different theory: These movies were made for women; and critics, especially 15 years ago, were overwhelmingly men. “Critics have an important job,” Bailey told me. “But earlier on in the 2000s, that job was taken very, very seriously to critique stuff that was art, right? Like, sophistication. Especially the men that were writing these reviews, if they would dare [get assigned] something about How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and it’s almost insulting that they would even be writing about that, instead of Kenneth Branagh’s next film.”

As Kenny points out to me, there are some rom-coms from that decade that critics liked: Juno and 500 Days of Summer both boast Metacritic scores over 75, while Bridget Jones’s Diary received a lukewarm reception at 66. But Kenny also readily acknowledges the influence of gender disparity among critics on the reception of romantic comedies. “That’s always been a problem,” Kenny said, citing German director Douglas Sirk, known for his melodramas in the ’50s. “There were certain critics who would say, ‘We can’t take Douglas Sirk seriously. He makes women’s movies.’ There is an inborn prejudice against rom-coms because of that.”

Bailey, in fact, was so frustrated by the critical reception of a 2017 romantic comedy she produced, I Do… Until I Don’t—written, directed by, and starring indie darling Lake Bell—that it prompted her to found The Cherry Picks, a review aggregation website that features reviews exclusively from women and non-binary critics. “I made a movie called I Do… Until I Don’t which was, for all promotional purposes, a chick flick romantic comedy,” Bailey explained. “And it’s not a perfect movie, but it’s good. All of my friends that are women outside of the industry, that I showed it to, loved it. They thought it was so cute, and so fun. Some even saw like twice.” But the mostly male critics who reviewed the film didn’t agree. The film has a 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 43 on Metacritic.

“We did have some female reviewers that didn’t like it as well,” Bailey recalled. “But the male reviewers, the way that they commented on it… it just seemed oddly patronizing. Like, ‘We’re very disappointed in Lake.’ As opposed to the women [critics] who, whether they liked it or didn’t like it, would actually talk about the movie.” Bailey wanted to know what the Rotten Tomatoes score for her movie—which she considered to be a movie made for women, specifically—would be if only reviews from women were counted. She couldn’t find it. “But I did find out that 78 percent of the Rotten Tomato critics were men, and that 83 percent of the top critics were men,” Bailey said. “I searched everywhere for female critic sites like Rotten Tomatoes.”

When she couldn’t find that, either, she made one herself, alongside her co-founder, Rebecca Odes. The Cherry Picks website officially launched in 2019. Interestingly, the aforementioned 2000s rom-coms fare only marginally better—sometimes even worse—on their “Cherry Scores,” as compared to the scores on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. These movies may have been “chick flicks,” but they weren’t necessarily liked any better by the chicks assigned to the review the flicks. Is it because, as Manohla Dargis articulated in her review of The Proposal, smart, successful women were tired of watching klutzy naked women fall into the arms of naked men? (A point rarely raised by the male critics who hated the film.) Or were women critics just as tired of the “cookie-cutter” quality of rom-coms as men were?

No matter the gender of the reviewer, there’s a misogynistic overtone to most, if not all of the “rotten” reviews. The phrase “chick flick” was thrown around freely, a dismissive term for a movie aimed at a female audience that has rightfully been retired by most gender-conscious critics. Toby Young of The Times UK was far less subtle, calling The Proposal “a dumbed-down ‘women’s picture.'” And let’s be real: Romantic comedies are hardly the only offenders of formulaic structure. Why is a predictable studio rom-com like How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days slammed as “lazy,” “stupid,” “annoying,” and “cookie-cutter;” but a predictable studio action heist flick, like 2006’s Mission Impossible III, applauded—or at least marginally respected—by critics who called it a “popcorn movie.” It seems “cookie-cutter” means shopping montages and kissing in the rain (girly, silly, trite) while “popcorn” means car chases and killing bad guys (manly, cool, fun). Both come from a studio formula, but only one is broadly respected by men.

Maybe that’s jumping to conclusions. Michael Bay’s action-packed Transformers movies received arguably even harsher treatment from critics in the 2000s than romantic comedies did. But isn’t there something to be said about how much this critically panned genre seems to mean to so many women? I don’t know many men who call Transformers their comfort watch. As Bailey said, “I actively search out romantic comedies and most of my friends who are women do, too. I don’t think that’s true for men. I mean, with a son and a husband— that’s not true for them.”

Kenny isn’t sure that he’d been any kinder now to the romantic comedies he didn’t like back then—like 2011’s Something Borrowed, which he gave two stars for RogerEbert.com—but he does acknowledge that, in general, the genre has a better reputation. “People are nostalgic for these rom-coms nowadays, because they don’t happen as much as they used to,” he said.

Both Kenny and Bailey agree that streamers like Netflix and Amazon have a big hand in bringing back teen romantic comedies, specifically.

“The Kissing Booth, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before—that proved so effective was that created its own kind of hegemony of rom-coms within streaming,” Kenny said. “Those are significant things, and not necessarily liked by critics.” (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before has a score of 64 on Metacritic, while The Kissing Booth 2 has a 39.) Kenny, who wrote about The Kissing Booth franchise for The Times, simply felt too old for the films. “I tried to give those pictures a fair shake, but there was definitely a sense of ‘I’m 60! What am I doing watching these teenagers running around?'”

But Bailey, who is over 45, maintains there’s a gender divide, regardless of age. “I have friends my age who are obsessed with The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Bailey said. “I don’t think there are many male critics out there willing to admit that—even if it’s true!”

Bailey adds that her recent favorite romantic comedy was 2022’s Marry Me, with Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. A quick look at reactions to that one from top critics on Rotten Tomatoes reveals some minds don’t change: Peter Travers, now writing for ABC News, found it to be “shameless fluff wrapped in a blanket of bland.” But though it’s still not equal, there are a lot more women reviewing films these days. New voices like Alison Wilmore (Vulture), Katie Walsh (Los Angeles Times), and Kate Erbland (IndieWire), all had nice things to say about JLo. Men, too, were receptive to Lopez’s brand of rom-com. Even Owen Glieberman of Variety, who once infamously trashed Pretty Woman for Entertainment Weekly, liked it, writing that “the very absurdity of what happens is a metaphor for the absurdity of love. The cheesiness is romance.”

Though it’s impossible to know for sure, I’m willing to bet the tone of these Marry Me reviews would have been a hell of a lot less forgiving in 2005. Critics seem far nicer to rom-coms these days, even if they’re not giving them raves. Netflix’s latest with Haley Lu Richardson, Love At First Sight, has a 76 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a 55 on Metacritic, and was liked by critics at both The Guardian and The New York Times. Amazon’s recent Red, White, Royal Blue has a 75 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a 62 on Metacritic, and improbably captured the heart of many top critics, including Travers. Both of these movies, with their earnest cheesiness, surely would have been prime targets for an early 2000s critic to rip to shreds.

For his part, Kenny says being married “to someone who really like Pretty Woman” has helped him find a new appreciation for modern films from the genre. “Some of the greatest films of all time—you can say they’re ‘classic screwball comedies,’ but they’re romantic comedies! So the rom-com is definitely worthy of respect. Now Pretty Woman isn’t like The Awful Truth, but they’re not entirely unrelated. As critics, I think, we all have a collective responsibility to be mindful of what this stuff is, where it’s coming from, and not be chauvinistic.”

Bailey added that she’s currently working on writing a new romantic comedy feature (on spec, in accordance with WGA strike rules). “I think moving forward culturally for us as filmmakers, we are trying to keep this genre alive.”