He’s British. She’s American. He’s a wide-eyed optimist. She’s world-weary. He loves Christmas songs. She loathes them. Naturally, they’re excellent for one another.
That traditional opposites-attract setup is the idea for the brand new Broadway musical “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).” It’s considered one of a clutch of in style new romantic comedies warming hearts this winter throughout numerous media.
There’s the HBO Max hockey present and word-of-mouth sensation “Heated Rivalry” and the Netflix agnostic-falls-for-a-rabbi sequence “Nobody Wants This,” whereas the see-you-next-year film “People We Meet on Vacation” has develop into an enormous Netflix hit.
There’s additionally “My Oxford Year,” the upcoming “Reminders of Him” and the reliable “Bridgerton,” now in Season 4. “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” lands on Broadway beside the Tony-winning android rom-com “Maybe Happy Ending.”
“They’re all the same story, really,” says Kit Buchan, who with Jim Barne wrote the “Two Strangers” musical. “How do two people inextricably drawn together but separated by an overwhelming obstacle melt into one another?”
Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor on the University of California, Davis, and creator of “Bonded by Evolution,” research romantic attraction and says the burst in rom-coms is welcome.
“I definitely get the sense that there are waves and this is the time of year when we get usually one or two surprise, probably streaming, hits in this genre,” says Eastwick, who additionally co-hosts “Love Factually,” a podcast that makes use of science to discover the most important rom-coms.
He says the style now not will get the respect it ought to, recalling that rom-coms was massive film occasions that garnered awards — like “Ghost,” the highest-grossing movie of 1990, which earned 5 Oscar nominations and gained two.
“It feels a little marginalized these days in the critic spaces and in the box-office spaces,” he says. “I hope that people don’t stop making these because people clearly want them.”
Some within the bumper crop of rom-coms this winter take the method and twist it barely. “Heated Rivalry,” which had a mean of 10.6 million viewers per episode within the U.S., makes the lovers same-sex. “Nobody Wants This,” whose second season garnered 8.6 million views in its first 4 days of streaming, explores non secular conversion. “People We Meet on Vacation,” which drew 17.2 million views over its January launch weekend, flips the gender of the associate who’s often the wisecracking agent of chaos.
“I think that’s often what makes some of these very compelling is where you’re able to wink and nod a little bit at the genre and have fun with it while conforming to people’s expectations at least somewhat,” Eastwick says.
“Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” has opposites appeal to within the very rom-com-friendly setting of New York, however makes the would-be lovers fairly bizarre. She’s a espresso retailer server and he is a movie show sweeper.
“Rom-coms tend to be rich white people with time on their hands. And that’s OK. We love it. We love watching them,” says Buchan. “‘But what if you’re shut out of that?’ was part of the question that we were asking when we set out to write it.”
The musical additionally winks about its adoration of rom-coms. “If this was a movie,” says the smitten British character, “we’d go ice-skating.” In one other scene, he decides there ought to be a montage of her coming out and in of a dressing room in a parade of fabulous outfits. Later, she does.
The creators are admitted big followers of rom-coms — their gold normal is “When Harry Met Sally” — at the same time as they gently skewer the style, out of affection.
“I think our greatest ambition of all was to write something that not only parodies and questions the mores of that genre and the stereotypes, but also slots into that genre in its own way,” says Buchan.
Director Brett Haley had by no means made a rom-com earlier than adapting “People We Meet on Vacation” from Emily Henry’s novel. To craft the movie, he reached again to ones he adored, like “Jerry Maguire,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “When Harry Met Sally.”
“They’re incredibly elevated. You care about the characters, the writing is impeccable, the performances are impeccable, the filmmaking is incredible,” he says. “To me, we just sort of lost some of that elevation. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong, by the way, with your Hallmark movies or other rom-coms that are a little fluffier, a little lighter. They’re just sort of meant to be put on and enjoyed and not taken really art.”
He took his two star-crossed lovers — Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, enjoying will-they-or-won’t-they pals — and earned the viewer’s belief: “It was all about grounding the comedy, the romance, the yearning, in reality.”
Haley, too, argues that rom-coms aren’t revered by critics nowadays. The style that kicked off with now-classics like “It Happened One Night” and “Bringing Up Baby” is simply too simply dismissed in 2026.
“If an action movie is elevated and checks all the boxes, you’ll find that critics go, ‘Hey, yeah, this did it. This was great,’” he says. “But when a romance does it and checks the boxes and does everything right, they go, ‘Oh, we’ve seen this before.’”
Haley says regardless of the essential response to rom-coms, he believes the common viewer yearns to take a seat on the sofa or go to the theater and share the expertise of falling head over heels.
“It’s especially dark right now. And I think that people want to believe in love,” he says. “I think there’s real value in a film that can genuinely make you feel good, even just for an escape for two hours. There is true worth in that.”
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