5 romantic comedies on Netflix you (probably) haven’t seen
We’ve seen every Julia Roberts rom-com a billion times. Ditto every Reese Witherspoon charmer, too. And don’t get us started on those Hugh Grant classics. And while there are uber-popular romantic comedies that have stood the test of time and warrant revisiting over and over again, there are just as many that you may have missed the first time around, ones that are just as heartwarming and hilarious as those trued-and-true favorites.
When it’s time to discover a lovely new rom-com, Netflix — one of the best streaming services around — is a great place to start, what with its sweeping selection of titles across the genre, from action-packed rom-com thrillers to an arranged-marriage flick that finds universality in the specifics of its setting.
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‘Tramps’
Callum Turner (“Eternity”) and Grace Van Patten (“Tell Me Lies”) are paired up for this 2016 Adam Leon-directed romantic comedy, which gives the crowd-pleasing genre a bit of a criminal edge. He plays Danny, a young aspiring Polish-American chef living in New York City, who is asked by his jailed brother Darren (Michal Vondel) to deliver a briefcase, contents unknown; she is Ellie, who has been hired by Darren’s employer to be Danny’s driver and needs the shady money to escape a bad situation at home.
However, when Danny accidentally swaps the wrong bag at the rendezvous point, the two pseudo-criminals are sent on a two-day journey through New York City to get the briefcase back. Tensions, of both the professional and romantic kind, abound. “Sweet, breezy, and unexpected, ‘Tramps ‘traipses through its romcom premise with earnestness and ease,” reads the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, where the rom-com holds a strong 96% approval rating.
Watch “Tramps” on Netflix now
‘Ali’s Wedding’
Co-written by actor-comedian Osamah Sami and Andrew Knight, this 2017 Aussie comedy is based on a true story from Sami’s life: He plays Ali, the eldest son of an Iraqi Shia cleric (Don Hany) in Melbourne who is torn between family duty (i.e. going through an arranged Muslim marriage to a girl at his father’s mosque) and following his own heart (being with the Australian-Lebanese girl he loves, Dianne, played by Helana Sawires.)
Directed by Jeffrey Walker (“Apple Cider Vinegar”), the warmhearted flick tells a hyper-specific tale but one full of relatable fun, about feeling stuck between personal desires and parental expectations. “Walker’s debut mines rapid-fire laughs and bountiful heart from a story of romantic misadventure set in train by a young man desperate to live up to his father’s expectations,” wrote Harry Windsor in his The Hollywood Reporter review.
Watch “Ali’s Wedding” on Netflix now
‘Oh, Hi’
New couple Iris (Molly Gordon, who cowrote the screenplay with director Sophie Brooks) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) are in the sweet and steamy early stage of their courtship when they decide to take a romantic weekend away from the city to a rented farmhouse in High Falls, New York. Sounds like your typical romantic stuff, right? Wrong: When Iris finds out that their relationship isn’t as exclusive as she believed and Isaac has been seeing other women the whole time, she decides to keep him chained to the bed “Misery”-style in an attempt to convince him that they belong together.
Obviously, “Oh, Hi” is far darker than your usual rom-com fare, but it offsets its sharp satire of the modern-day dating scene with genuine emotional depth and relatable anxiousness. After all, who hasn’t acted a little crazy in the name of love?
Watch “Oh, Hi” on Netflix now
‘Tramps’
![Tramps | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6GYHnhcH7Ns/maxresdefault.jpg)
Callum Turner (“Eternity”) and Grace Van Patten (“Tell Me Lies”) are paired up for this 2016 Adam Leon-directed romantic comedy, which gives the crowd-pleasing genre a bit of a criminal edge. He plays Danny, a young aspiring Polish-American chef living in New York City, who is asked by his jailed brother Darren (Michal Vondel) to deliver a briefcase, contents unknown; she is Ellie, who has been hired by Darren’s employer to be Danny’s driver and needs the shady money to escape a bad situation at home.
However, when Danny accidentally swaps the wrong bag at the rendezvous point, the two pseudo-criminals are sent on a two-day journey through New York City to get the briefcase back. Tensions, of both the professional and romantic kind, abound. “Sweet, breezy, and unexpected, ‘Tramps ‘traipses through its romcom premise with earnestness and ease,” reads the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, where the rom-com holds a strong 96% approval rating.
Watch “Tramps” on Netflix now
‘The Breaker Upperers’
![The Breaker Upperers | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/zKAjnXG3m4A/maxresdefault.jpg)
Sure, most rom-coms are taken with the act of falling in love but what happens when you fall out of love? Meet Mel and Jen — played by the film’s writer-director duo, Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek — two Auckland women who find out that they were being two-timed by the same man and later fuel that romantic cynicism into a new business, The Breaker Upperers, a bespoke agency that helps break couples up for cash using increasingly unorthodox means. (Think fake deaths, police interrogations, surprise pregnancies and the like.)
However, both their close friendship and professional partnership take a hit when one of the ladies betrays their golden rule: don’t fall for a client, and a much, much younger one (played by James Rolleston) at that.
The 2018 New Zealand comedy “brings the laughs early and often, thanks to the dry wit — and effervescent chemistry— of writer-director-star duo Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami,” says Rotten Tomatoes critics; the rom-com has a solid 87% approval rating on the review aggregator site.
Watch “The Breaker Upperers” on Netflix now
‘Hit Man’
We already know that Glen Powell can do a traditional rom-com (“Set It Up” is one of our faves and is also streaming on Netflix) but the star also gamely works his charms in unconventional takes on the genre, too, like in Richard Linklater’s 2023 romantic crime comedy “Hit Man,” called “a blast of pure pleasure and one of the year’s best films” by The Washington Post’s Ty Burr.
In it, Powell — who earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance and also cowrote the script alongside Linklater — Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered college professor who also works for the New Orleans Police Department to assist in sting operations. His side gig soon finds Gary needing to pose as a hitman to bust high-paying clients, one of whom is a discontented wife named Madison (Adria Arjona), who is trying to have her abusive husband axed. The growing feelings between Powell’s character and his new client, however, take him into dangerous (and hilarious) territory.
Watch “Hit Man” on Netflix now
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