The best romantic comedies on Netflix

Rom-coms have the tricky task of straddling the “rom” and the “com” part, with a lot of star-steered vehicles leaning toward the former. Always Be My Maybe thankfully focuses on the latter; there are a lot of laughs packed into its friendship-becomes-something-more story. In keeping with , ABMM offered director Nahnatchka Khan her film directorial debut; Grimm scribe Michael Golamco wrote the screenplay with the movie’s stars, Ali Wong and Randall Park. The film smartly kicks off by showing the pair as adorable childhood best friends, so that we’re rooting for them right out of the gate. []

Set in an unspecified small town—sleepy establishing shots suggest a location somewhere on the West Coast—the indie film Blue Jay begins in time-honored fashion, with a chance meeting between a man and a woman. In this case, they’re shopping in the same aisle at the supermarket, and a major silent drama ensues before either party even acknowledges the other’s presence. Jim (Mark Duplass) appears to recognize Amanda (Sarah Paulson), but quickly decides to ignore her, though he doesn’t walk away. Amanda then spots Jim and, following a visible struggle about whether or not to say hello, finally does so. Jim greets her warmly, starts to go in for a hug, senses it might be unwanted, manages to retreat before he’s committed himself irrevocably. Duplass and Paulson counteract the deliberately banal dialogue (Duplass also wrote the screenplay) with superbly anxious body language; Jim and Amanda’s “casual,” “amiable” chitchat is so painfully forced that it’s a wonder nothing ruptures. These two people clearly have a troubled history, and it takes Blue Jay only a few minutes to generate intense curiosity about what it is. Good thing, too, because that relationship constitutes the entire movie. (The only other speaking role is a one-scene cameo by Clu Gulager, playing the proprietor of a convenience store.) This is a simple story of high school sweethearts who reconnect roughly two decades later, and it derives virtually all of its power from the rapport between the two stars and how precisely they communicate what’s not being addressed. []

“This is not a love story,” introverted high schooler Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) warns us in her opening narration. “Or not one where anyone gets what they want.” That ominous caveat adds a little more tension than there might otherwise be to a Netflix coming-of-age rom-com that updates the Cyrano de Bergerac formula for Gen Z. In place of Cyrano’s nasal insecurity, Ellie’s anxiety stems from her sexuality. She’s gay in a small, religious Pacific Northwest town where that isn’t exactly the norm. So Ellie stays in the closet and tries to disappear into the background, at least when she’s not writing her classmates’ papers at $20 a pop. Enter second-string tight end Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer), a sweet, plainspoken meathead who hires Ellie to write a love letter to class beauty Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire). The only problem is Aster is Ellie’s secret crush as well.While Netflix’s previous Cyrano riff, , emphasized the creepiness of the story but had none of its heart, The Half Of It comes far closer to capturing the poignancy of Edmond Rostand’s original 19th-century play. As the correspondence between “Paul” and Aster unfolds over letters, texts, and even a little bit of graffiti, Ellie discovers to her delight and dismay that she and Aster have just about everything in common—from their taste in New German Cinema to their existential musings on art. While the real Paul struggles to keep up the ruse in person, he and Ellie develop a close friendship of their own, leading to a complicated love triangle with legs that are platonic, romantic, and sometimes a confused mixture of the two. []

Writer-director Jim Strouse () nails the trendsetting speech patterns and whip-smart witticisms familiar to listeners of Jessica Williams’ podcast with fellow comedian Phoebe Robinson, 2 Dope Queens, and writes Williams as a confident, charismatic young woman who rocks the hell out of a jumpsuit and who’s incapable of living on anyone’s terms but her own. Chris O’Dowd and Williams play well off of each other, conveying the stages of a new relationship from awkward first date to first big fight with an easy and believable chemistry. She plays well off of Lakeith Stanfield as well, in recurring interludes where Jessica imagines getting the last word with her feckless ex, which add a welcome dash of surrealism to the proceedings. The film does contain a few truly funny bits, like Jessica’s gift of a homemade child’s guide to dismantling the patriarchy to her conservative pregnant sister, making it feel like an enjoyable hangout with a funny friend throughout its 85-minute running time. []

In terms of plot, The Lovebirds is nothing new. In fact, it’s simply the latest in a recent series of films, like and and , about a couple coincidentally caught up in wacky but legitimately dangerous criminal activity. In this case, it’s hipster creatives Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) who get pulled into a blackmail ring after they accidentally run over a cyclist with their car in the midst of a relationship-ending fight. Add a New Orleans location that isn’t especially necessary to the story and a dinner party full of judgmental friends (and one hunky coworker), and the Mad Libs card is pretty much filled out. The dialogue is the real star here—that, and the chemistry between the leads, of course. []

Hugh Grant blinks compulsively at another impenetrable American woman in Notting Hill, a companion piece to 1994’s Four Weddings And A Funeral. This time out, Grant plays the owner of a failing bookshop cozily entrenched in London’s fashionable Notting Hill neighborhood. Somewhat recently divorced and shuffling through life behind a stiff upper lip, Grant’s existence becomes disrupted following a chance encounter with an American movie star played by Julia Roberts. They fall in love, maybe, but encounter a good number of obstacles as the possible romance stretches out over the course of a couple of years. Both Notting Hill and Four Weddings are the work of writer Richard Curtis, and with this film, Curtis has tapped into a similar vein of relentless pleasantness, even during its characters’ most unpleasant moments. Grant remains charming and comfortable delivering believably clever lines and, as in Four Weddings, Notting Hill features a talented ensemble playing his friends. It helps that director Roger Michell paces things deliberately, both in the way he tells the story and in the way he allows scenes to stretch out like natural conversations. As in Four Weddings, however, Roberts’ character, like Andie MacDowell’s before her, seems more like a device, her romance with Grant more a hook to hang a movie on than a love story. Still, Roberts does a better job of conveying a beating pulse than MacDowell did, and she certainly seems to enjoy taking shots at the nature of celebrity, a task at which the relatively light Notting Hill succeeds, in an offhanded way, better than most Hollywood self-parodies. It may boil down to little more than a minor variation on Four Weddings’ formula, but it’s an interesting and entertaining one. Literate, witty, and allowing for the possibility of real unhappiness, Curtis’ romantic comedies have invented a better formula. []

In the first three minutes of She’s Gotta Have It, writer-director-star Spike Lee offers up a Zora Neale Hurston quote, a plaintive jazz score by his father Bill, artful photos of New York street life by his brother David, and sumptuous black-and-white footage of bridges and brownstones, shot by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. In 1986, few American independent films looked and sounded as distinctive as She’s Gotta Have It, and Lee upped the ante further by seeming to promote a theretofore-unrecognized new Harlem Renaissance. From the jump, She’s Gotta Have It announced that it wasn’t going to define black life in terms of crime and poverty, just as it wasn’t going to bind independent filmmaking to moribund realism. Tracy Camilla Johns plays a young commercial artist juggling three boyfriends: genteel professional Tommy Redmond Hicks, preening model John Canada Terrell, and Lee, a livewire bike messenger. (Johns also has a predatory lesbian friend… best forgotten.) The movie tries to compensate for its lack of story by promising a frank look at female sexuality, but the title tells the tale: When it comes to its central idea, She’s Gotta Have It is more leering than revelatory. Luckily, Lee has more on his mind than just making some nebulous points about gender relations. She’s Gotta Have It is a calling-card film in the best sense of the term, in that it doesn’t just show what Lee can do, but what anyone can do. []

This NYC-set heartbreak story is written and directed by creator Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and stars Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda Wise as three longtime best friends. When Rodriguez’s Jenny gets dumped by her boyfriend of nine years, Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), she suddenly has to take inventory of her life, evaluate what she wants, and reflect on nearly a decade of memories she built with a person who suddenly can’t be a permanent part of her life anymore. It’s one of the genre’s most gutting and complete portraits of a breakup and its sticky, chaotic aftermath. []

Straight Up is funnier, fresher, and more authentically yearning than many of the rom-coms that have found success on streaming platforms over the past few years. In addition to writing and directing, James Sweeney also stars in the film as Todd, smart and fastidious twentysomething who has been presumed gay for most of his life (a “Kinsey 6,” in the parlance of one running gag). Is he, though? After failing to develop any meaningful romantic or sexual relationships, Todd has started to wonder if he’s just been conforming to expectations based on his nontraditional masculinity and general squeamishness, including a case of genuine OCD. Though his only two friends assure him that he couldn’t be anything else but homosexual, Todd tentatively branches out after a library meet-cute with struggling actress Rory (Katie Findlay), whose name allows them to bond over a mutual love of . Rory, who shares Todd’s intelligence and one-ups his sometimes-mordant sense of humor, has her own reasons for feeling comfortable with a relationship that de-prioritizes physical affection in favor of talk, talk, talk. Sweeney and Findlay’s motormouthed, interlocking dialogue makes a convincing case that maybe chat could be better than sex. []

, To All The Boys combines the stylized cinematography of a Wes Anderson movie with the heart of a John Hughes film and the spirit of the best of the 1990s high school rom-coms. Based on the first in Jenny Han’s best-selling trilogy of young adult novels, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before centers on introverted high school junior Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), whose world comes crashing down when her secret stash of love letters accidentally make their way out into the world. To avoid dealing with the fallout from the note sent to her older sister’s ex-boyfriend Josh Sanderson (Israel Broussard), Lara Jean pulls a classic move and impulsively kisses another letter recipient, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Once Peter gets a handle on Lara Jean’s situation, he suggests they start fake dating each other so that Lara Jean can avoid Josh and he can win back his ex-girlfriend by making her jealous. They draw up a contract of ground rules (no to any more kissing, yes to Sixteen Candles-inspired back pocket spins), and set about duping their school—both in person and via social media. Soon enough, however, Lara Jean and Peter’s fake relationship leads to some real feelings. []