Let rom-com leading men be attainably hot again

A mere 15 seconds into the first, very confusing teaser trailer for Anyone But You—the fizzy romantic comedy starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney as frenemies-turned-fake-lovers—it was clear that Powell’s Ben would be a specific kind of rom-com leading man: the ridiculously, life-ruining-ly hot kind. Flexing off the side of a sailboat wearing nothing but swim trunks with a Paul Mescal-approved inseam and an ungodly amount of abs, Powell’s blatant Men’s Health-cover hotness wasn’t just perfectly matched by Sweeney’s own blonde-and-busty sex appeal, but it was also a signal that this was a rom-com that was trading in the aspirational, not the attainable.

That’s in no way meant to cheapen Powell’s leading-man bonafides. The man has rom-com rizz in spades, as evidenced by the fact that Anyone But You has become the highest-grossing R-rated rom-com since 2016’s Bridget Jones’ Baby, clearing more than $100 million globally at the box office. But the obviousness of his beauty (dude looks like he was built in the same thirst lab as Ryan Gosling, Scott Eastwood and, notably, his Golden Globes doppelganger Justin Hartley) places Powell’s Ben firmly in a category shared by the likes of Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding and Crazy Stupid Love’s Gosling: buffed, bronzed and untouchably, inaccessibly and, yes, crazily attractive.

These are not the type of men you could imagine seeing in the line at Trader Joe’s or playing fetch with their dog in the park or bored to death in the waiting room at the dentist. And, notably, they are not the type of men who came to define the rom-com genre during its golden age, from the late ’80s through the early aughts. We’re talking about the “attainably hot” kind—undeniably attractive (this is showbiz, after all), but more likely to flex charisma than a bicep.

Let’s look at the rom-com kings of yore. There’s Tom Hanks, a titan of the genre with You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and Joe Versus The Volcano, and the closest thing we have to a male America’s Sweetheart. Handsome, obviously, but not an outright heartthrob per se, Hanks easily parlayed his everyman appeal into “I could totally date that guy” familiarity through his crackling chemistry and comedic warmth opposite frequent leading lady Meg Ryan.

Speaking of, Billy Crystal—Ryan’s love interest in what is widely considered the greatest rom-com of all time, When Harry Met Sally—was a seemingly unlikely leading man even to the makers of that film. (Screenwriter Nora Ephron reportedly worried that he and Meg Ryan were too unevenly matched in terms of looks, so much so that they ended up slapping dorky specs on Sally Albright to make up for it.) But Crystal, ye of short-king stature and receding hairline, proved both Nora and the naysayers wrong by infusing his cynical-but-sweet Harry Burns with a low-key sexiness that has endured for decades. (That beard and fisherman’s sweater combo certainly doesn’t hurt.)

And take Adam Sandler, who proved he could master the comedic end of things (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore) but not the romantic side until he starred in The Wedding Singer. The 1998 charmer—in which the comedian played earnest crooner Robbie Hart opposite Drew Barrymore’s equally adorable waitress Julia Sullivan—established Sandler as a dorky-hot rom-com lead and he stretched the appeal of that sweet-schlub humor and a nice smile into two more titles with Barrymore, 2004’s 50 First Dates and 2014’s Blended.

These fellas didn’t need chiseled jawlines, perfect coifs, and Brad Pitt-in-Fight Club bods to sell the hell out of a swoon-worthy meet-cute or a perfectly-timed finale grand gesture. And neither did John Cusack in Say Anything, Jack Black in The Holiday, John Corbett in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Jason Segal in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or James Gandolfini in Enough Said. We want our Colin Firth dweeby in an ugly Christmas sweater (Bridget Jones’ Diary), our Mark Ruffalo at his most boy-next-door and puppy-eyed (13 Going On 30), and our Kumail Nanjiani not yet so well-acquainted with a weight bench (The Big Sick).

Hell, if we had to engineer the platonic ideal of an “attainably hot” rom-com man, it might just be Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping. His scruffy carpenter Jack Callaghan slow-burns with those soft normcore sweatshirts, soulful brown eyes, and the devastating way he leans. His dreaminess is of the tangible, touchable sort: you can so imagine forking your fingers through that fluffy ’90s hair that you damn near stick your hand through the screen.

Yes, the romantic comedy is an inherently escapist genre—if anyone tried to do half the things that happen in movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding or Love Actually or Never Been Kissed, they would very likely be arrested or at the very least psychiatrically observed. But that doesn’t mean we want or need all things symmetrical and sinewy when it comes to the men offering up that onscreen fantasy.

So let the absolutely adorkable 5-foot-5 Daniel Radcliffe sweep Quinta Brunson off her similarly petite feet in a rom-com. Let Daniel Kaluuya flash that suave charm and those pearly whites in a sweet first-date scene. Let the attainably hot men of television’s own rom-com renaissance—your Tyler James Williamses, your Jake Johnsons, your William Jackson Harpers—graduate to the big leagues and get moviegoing audiences swooning. And let Glen Powell skip the gym once in a while: 2018’s Set It Up proved that the guy could scale back the swoleness with some sweet-and-sour snark and a bad haircut. A few weeks without those daily bicep pumps and he might just start to resemble someone we’d encounter at the dry cleaners. And we’ll be seated and ready for it.