The best romantic comedies to watch on Amazon Prime Video

On paper, Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In Paris might well read like a light French farce, full of wacky characters and playful relationship banter that only turns serious toward the end of the film. The reality is much more raw. Playing a thirtysomething couple making a brief stopover in Paris after a vacation to Italy, Delpy (Before Sunrise) and co-star Adam Goldberg snipe at each other with casual venom, refusing to acknowledge or accede to each other’s calls for comfort or reassurance. When he says she’s special, she shoots back “Like in the retarded way, which is why I’m going out with you.” When she gives him more information than he wants about something, he says “It’s like dating public television.” They both seem a little neurotic and a little self-centered, but mostly, after two years together, they’ve apparently run out of reasons to be kind. And while their give-and-take is almost playful, both actors put an uncomfortable edge on it, fit to keep viewers squirming with alternate waves of sympathy and disgust. []

Interesting anecdotes don’t always make for interesting movies; your story may kill at parties, but that doesn’t mean it belongs on the big screen. In The Big Sick, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who plays Dinesh on , and Emily V. Gordon, the writer and former therapist he married, dramatize the rocky first year of their relationship, with Nanjiani starring as a lightly fictionalized version of himself. That may sound, in general synopsis, like a story better told over dinner and drinks; besides friends, family, and fans of the the two co-host, who was clamoring for a feature-length glimpse into the couple’s courtship? But there was more than the usual dating-scene obstacles threatening their future together. Collaborating on the screenplay for The Big Sick, Nanjiani and Gordon have made a perceptive, winning romantic comedy from those obstacles, including the unforeseen emergency that provides the film its title. []

When Bishop Henry Broughman (David Niven) puts up a prayer for help with building a new cathedral, he receives an answer in the ever-charming guise of Cary Grant as the angelic Dudley. Dudley hasn’t come to Earth to pitch in on construction, though: He’s there to help patch up the cracks forming between Henry and his family—an unstated mission that grows complicated when the heavenly visitor starts falling for the titular bishop’s wife, Julia (Loretta Young). [Erik Adams]

Charade is so Hitchcockian that it’s often been confused for the genuine article. Some have called it the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made. In fact, it was directed by , famous for movie musicals like and On The Town. He drafted two tremendous stars from Hollywood’s golden age—Audrey Hepburn and Hitchcock favorite Cary Grant—for his own sleek thriller of the kind the master specialized in. Fun and charming, Charade does have a lot in common with a lighter Hitchcock entertainment like : impossibly good-looking leads, glamorous setting, runway-worthy wardrobe (designed by Givenchy), jazzy score (by Henry Mancini). It also uses the Hitchcock trope of the innocent person who finds themselves caught in a weblike conspiracy (which Grant had recently run through in 1959’s North By Northwest). Hepburn is the impossibly chic Regina Lampert, who meets and flirts with Alexander Dyle (Grant) at a ski resort while she ponders divorcing her husband, Charles. When Regina returns to Paris, though, she finds that Charles has been murdered, and everything in their apartment is gone. Her own life is in danger, too, as a cast of thugs, each more unsavory than the next, demands the 250,000 francs that Charles apparently squirreled away. But she has no idea where the money could be. Fortunately, Regina has help in Alex, who shows up in Paris to help her navigate this turbulent chain of events. But soon, we see him meet with a series of heavies (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass). Whose side is he really on? Because he’s played by Cary Grant, we all know the answer, even as the character continues to shed identities and offer new fake names. []

Even if you’ve never seen His Girl Friday, you’re almost certainly familiar with its style. Along with The Front Page (its source material), His Girl Friday created the image of journalists as fast-talking wheeler-dealers willing to do anything for the next big scoop—an archetype that’s been mocked by everyone from to . Aaron Sorkin and Amy Sherman-Palladino have spent their entire careers trying to recapture His Girl Friday’s magnetic mile-a-minute magic. And Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson remains one of classic Hollywood’s most iconic no-nonsense dames. Russell owns the screen from the moment Hildy confidently strides through The Morning Post newsroom, warmly greeting old colleagues and wearing the hell out of a striped dress and matching Seussian hat. The film’s title may reference the “man Friday” valet character from Robinson Crusoe, but it’s clear that Hildy is no one’s servant. She barges into the office of ex-editor and ex-husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant) to inform him that not only is she leaving the Post, she’s retiring from journalism all together in order to settle down into a nice, quiet domestic life with her new mild-mannered fiancé, Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy, one of cinema’s first and best ). Walter momentarily panics before coming up with a plan: He’ll remind Hildy that she’s got ink in her veins by getting her to cover the upcoming execution of Earl Williams (John Qualen). [Caroline Siede]

1995 marked a turning point in the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It was the year the FDA approved an antiretroviral treatment that would soon bring about a massive decline in AIDS-related deaths and illnesses. Yet 1995 was also the year in which AIDS-related deaths—then the leading cause of death among all Americans ages 25 to 44—reached their peak. Roughly 50,000 Americans died of AIDS complications in 1995. It was against that backdrop that the gay romantic comedy Jeffrey debuted. The experimental indie comedy is a cinematic tribute to the heart, humor, sadness, romance, and, most importantly, resilience of gay men living in New York City on the heels of a decade and a half of crisis. As one character sums it up towards the end of the film: “Just think of AIDS as the guest that won’t leave. The one we all hate. But you have to remember: Hey! It’s still our party.” []

Peter Glanz’s debut feature, The Longest Week, is clearly influenced by the works of Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman, Woody Allen. Though, as aggressively derivative though The Longest Week is, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, but of a raw talent who’s still struggling to find his own voice. In the meantime, his impressions are pretty darn impressive. As the narrator (Larry Pine) solemnly explains, Conrad Valmont (Jason Bateman) is a middle-aged wastrel who’s lived a frivolous life at the expense of his rich but perpetually absent parents. When they suddenly cut Conrad off during a messy separation (abroad), he’s forced to move in with his best friend, Dylan (Billy Crudup), a fellow member of what Stillman’s gang called the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie. This arrangement would probably have worked out fine, if not for the fact that both men have designs upon Beatrice (Olivia Wilde), who’s ostensibly dating Dylan but recently gave Conrad her phone number when they met by chance on the subway. What makes The Longest Week distinctive is its sardonically whimsical tone, which is influenced as much by European cinema in general as it is by the other filmmakers mentioned above. (One could also mention Noah Baumbach’s , which has a similar nouvelle vague feel.) Glanz is very much aware that he’s going to take some heat on this front: Near the end of the movie, a writer is asked, “How do you respond to the criticism that your novel is inherently derivative of the works of Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton?” He politely replies, “Thank you.” Hard to argue with that. []

One of the first and still among the best of the ‘30s screwball comedies, My Man Godfrey serves up absurdist romance and light social commentary in a fizzy mix that benefits from director Gregory La Cava’s willingness to indulge improvisation, a trait he acquired from friend and frequent collaborator W.C. Fields. William Powell stars as a willful vagrant who gains employment when dizzy New York socialite Carole Lombard finds him at a riverside trash pile and offers him a job as her family’s butler. A shave and shower later, Powell is back to playing the suave gentleman he exemplified throughout his career, but with a key note of humility; meanwhile, Lombard preens, pouts, and plots to win her man’s heart and prevent him from being browbeaten by her mean-spirited sister (Gail Patrick). My Man Godfrey is largely assembled from asides and bits of throwaway business, the most amusing coming from Mischa Auer as an Italian freeloader who loafs around the family mansion, eating and feigning a faint whenever the subject turns to money. The film as a whole dances around the issue of money, as well, implying merely that it’s easy to get and easy to lose. La Cava is more interested in the idea of responsibility, which he explores by applying the concept of “the forgotten man”—a Depression-era euphemism for the down-and-out, particularly those who fought in WWI—to the servants, and even to the casual acquaintances that self-absorbed swells take for granted. []

There’s no froth like French froth. And few French-froth-purveyors are as adept as Pierre Salvadori, who knows exactly how to make romantic complications and class conflict as pleasantly diverting as a day at the beach—and, for better or worse, as placid. In Salvadori’s Priceless, Audrey Tautou plays a skilled gold-digger in the Holly Golightly mold who mistakes resort-hotel employee Gad Elmaleh for a swell. They share a night of passion, and when Tautou returns a year later, they share another night. But the second time around, Tautou’s well-heeled fiancé finds her out, then kicks her out. She races back to Elmaleh, who’s so smitten that he’s willing to tap into his savings and investments in order to give Tautou the kind of life she craves. It takes less than 24 hours for her to bankrupt him. That’s when Salvadori and his co-writer Benoît Graffin concoct a smart twist. Broke and in debt in Nice, Elmaleh wins the sympathy of rich widow Marie-Christine Adam, who makes him her own “kept man.” So when Tautou and Elmaleh next meet in Monte Carlo, they compare notes about how to be a good gigolo. No one could be as absurdly servile as Elmaleh, though it’s still funny and a little poignant how quickly he adjusts to being a high-end prostitute. (“I’m so used to saying yes that I don’t dare say no,” he explains.) But the real memorable figure in the story is Tautou, who at the beginning of Priceless is so confident in her trade that she can expertly opine on how much everything costs and how much she deserves, yet by the end of the film, realizes that after years of living off men, she hasn’t really held onto anything of worth. []

“When the revolution comes, it will be because of this wedding,” says first son Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) in the opening minutes of . A nod to a “revolution is coming” is a cliché at this point, vague enough to gesture at pretty much anything. In this case, at least, the vagueness is the point. Alex is referring to the conspicuous consumption before him, but anyone with at least passing knowledge of the story they’re about to witness knows they’re about to watch a gay rom-com, a genre growing in prominence but still relatively rare. Red, White & Royal Blue, ultimately, isn’t revolutionary. It’s more traditional than not—which means, thankfully, that it’s still a lot of fun. []

Many weddings are chaotic, but none more so than in romcoms. The milieu is a playground for misadventure, where highly constructed, hilarity-laden shenanigans ensue easily, leading to heart-rending poignancy once the happy couple inevitably makes it to the altar. While director Jason Moore’s doesn’t mess too much with that formula, its sentiment offers a refreshing spin on the therapeutic benefits of the anxiety-inducing matrimonial process, along with a body count and a satisfying dose of escapism… []

In Something’s Gotta Give, Jack Nicholson plays a man who’s worlds apart from Warren Schmidt, but who comes to wear Schmidt’s knowledge for all the world to see. That adds a touch of gravity to Nancy Meyers’ pleasantly but deceptively lightweight film, a romantic comedy that takes a rare tack by leaving its characters different from how it finds them. Nicholson begins the film as a man happy to keep reminders of aging at arm’s length: He’s driving to a romantic Hamptons weekend with girlfriend Amanda Peet, the latest in his string of nubile twentysomethings. But their getaway is interrupted by the arrival of Peet’s playwright mother, Diane Keaton, then by a mild heart attack that leaves him recuperating in the latter’s beach house. The setup is about as obvious as they come, but Meyers steers away from romantic-comedy clichés until she has no other choice. But mostly, it’s just a pleasure to watch Keaton and Nicholson learning new steps in an old dance, stumbling to grab at happiness before it’s too late. []