The perfect romantic comedies to look at on Amazon Prime Video
Lovers of romantic comedies have an array of choices on Amazon Prime Video—significantly on the subject of oldies however goodies. Cary Grant classics abound, like His Lady Friday and To Catch A Thief, and the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey is accessible each in black-and-white and shade variations. However Amazon provides newer classics, too, from style queen Nancy Meyers to the Oscar-nominated Kumail Nanjiani in The Big Sick. Click on by means of our up to date roundup of the very best rom-coms to stream on Amazon proper now, and let a little bit heat into your day.
This listing was up to date January 20, 2023.
Learn extra
2 Days In Paris
On paper, Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In Paris may properly learn like a lightweight French farce, stuffed with wacky characters and playful relationship banter that solely turns critical towards the top of the movie. The fact is far more uncooked. Enjoying a thirtysomething couple making a short stopover in Paris after a trip to Italy, Delpy (Earlier than Dawn) and co-star Adam Goldberg snipe at one another with informal venom, refusing to acknowledge or accede to one another’s requires consolation or reassurance. When he says she’s particular, she shoots again “Like within the retarded method, which is why I’m going out with you.” When she provides him extra info than he needs about one thing, he says “It’s like courting public tv.” They each appear a little bit neurotic and a little bit self-centered, however largely, after two years collectively, they’ve apparently run out of causes to be variety. And whereas their give-and-take is nearly playful, each actors put an uncomfortable edge on it, match to maintain viewers squirming with alternate waves of sympathy and disgust. [Tasha Robinson]
Fascinating anecdotes don’t at all times make for attention-grabbing motion pictures; your story might kill at events, however that doesn’t imply it belongs on the large display. In The Massive Sick, slapstick comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who performs Dinesh on Silicon Valley, and Emily V. Gordon, the author and former therapist he married, dramatize the rocky first 12 months of their relationship, with Nanjiani starring as a flippantly fictionalized model of himself. That will sound, on the whole synopsis, like a narrative higher instructed over dinner and drinks; apart from mates, household, and followers of the podcast the 2 co-host, who was clamoring for a feature-length glimpse into the couple’s courtship? However there was greater than the same old dating-scene obstacles threatening their future collectively. Collaborating on the screenplay for The Massive Sick, Nanjiani and Gordon have made a perceptive, successful romantic comedy from these obstacles, together with the unexpected emergency that gives the movie its title. [A.A. Dowd]
The Bishop’s Spouse
The Bishop’s Spouse (1947) Official Trailer – Cary Grant, Loretta Younger Film HD
When Bishop Henry Broughman (David Niven) places up a prayer for assist with constructing a brand new cathedral, he receives a solution within the ever-charming guise of Cary Grant because the angelic Dudley. Dudley hasn’t come to Earth to pitch in on development, although: He’s there to assist patch up the cracks forming between Henry and his household—an unspoken mission that grows difficult when the heavenly customer begins falling for the titular bishop’s spouse, Julia (Loretta Younger). [Erik Adams]
Charade
Charade is so Hitchcockian that it’s typically been confused for the real article. Some have known as it the very best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock by no means made. In reality, it was directed by Stanley Donen, well-known for film musicals like Singin’ In The Rain and On The City. He drafted two super stars from Hollywood’s golden age—Audrey Hepburn and Hitchcock favourite Cary Grant—for his personal glossy thriller of the sort the grasp specialised in. Enjoyable and charming, Charade does have so much in widespread with a lighter Hitchcock leisure like To Catch A Thief: impossibly handsome leads, glamorous setting, runway-worthy wardrobe (designed by Givenchy), jazzy rating (by Henry Mancini). It additionally makes use of the Hitchcock trope of the harmless one that finds themselves caught in a weblike conspiracy (which Grant had lately run by means of in 1959’s North By Northwest). Hepburn is the impossibly stylish Regina Lampert, who meets and flirts with Alexander Dyle (Grant) at a ski resort whereas she ponders divorcing her husband, Charles. When Regina returns to Paris, although, she finds that Charles has been murdered, and the whole lot of their residence is gone. Her personal life is at risk, too, as a solid of thugs, every extra unsavory than the following, calls for the 250,000 francs that Charles apparently squirreled away. However she has no concept the place the cash might be. Fortuitously, Regina has assist in Alex, who exhibits up in Paris to assist her navigate this turbulent chain of occasions. However quickly, we see him meet with a sequence of heavies (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass). Whose aspect is he actually on? As a result of he’s performed by Cary Grant, everyone knows the reply, even because the character continues to shed identities and supply new pretend names. [Gwen Inhat]
His Lady Friday
Even for those who’ve by no means seen His Lady Friday, you’re nearly actually acquainted with its model. Together with The Entrance Web page (its supply materials), His Lady Friday created the picture of journalists as fast-talking wheeler-dealers prepared to do something for the following huge scoop—an archetype that’s been mocked by everybody from Zooey Deschanel on Saturday Night Live to Bojack Horseman. Aaron Sorkin and Amy Sherman-Palladino have spent their complete careers making an attempt to recapture His Lady Friday’s magnetic mile-a-minute magic. And Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson stays one among traditional Hollywood’s most iconic no-nonsense dames. Russell owns the display from the second Hildy confidently strides by means of The Morning Publish newsroom, warmly greeting outdated colleagues and sporting the hell out of a striped gown and matching Seussian hat. The movie’s title might reference the “man Friday” valet character from Robinson Crusoe, however it’s clear that Hildy is nobody’s servant. She barges into the workplace of ex-editor and ex-husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant) to tell him that not solely is she leaving the Publish, she’s retiring from journalism all collectively with the intention to quiet down into a pleasant, quiet home life together with her new mild-mannered fiancé, Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy, one among cinema’s first and finest “Baxters”). Walter momentarily panics earlier than developing with a plan: He’ll remind Hildy that she’s bought ink in her veins by getting her to cowl the upcoming execution of Earl Williams (John Qualen). [Caroline Siede]
Jeffrey
1995 marked a turning level within the AIDS epidemic in the US. It was the 12 months the FDA accepted an antiretroviral therapy that will quickly deliver a few large decline in AIDS-related deaths and diseases. But 1995 was additionally the 12 months wherein AIDS-related deaths—then the main reason for demise amongst all Individuals ages 25 to 44—reached their peak. Roughly 50,000 Individuals died of AIDS issues in 1995. It was in opposition to that backdrop that the homosexual romantic comedy Jeffrey debuted. The experimental indie comedy is a cinematic tribute to the guts, humor, disappointment, romance, and, most significantly, resilience of homosexual males residing in New York Metropolis on the heels of a decade and a half of disaster. As one character sums it up in direction of the top of the movie: “Simply consider AIDS because the visitor that received’t depart. The one all of us hate. However it’s important to keep in mind: Hey! It’s nonetheless our celebration.” [Caroline Siede]
The Longest Week
Peter Glanz’s debut characteristic, The Longest Week, is clearly influenced by the works of Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman, Woody Allen. Although, as aggressively by-product although The Longest Week is, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, however of a uncooked expertise who’s nonetheless struggling to seek out his personal voice. Within the meantime, his impressions are fairly darn spectacular. Because the narrator (Larry Pine) solemnly explains, Conrad Valmont (Jason Bateman) is a middle-aged wastrel who’s lived a frivolous life on the expense of his wealthy however perpetually absent mother and father. After they all of a sudden minimize Conrad off throughout a messy separation (overseas), he’s pressured to maneuver in along with his finest pal, Dylan (Billy Crudup), a fellow member of what Stillman’s Metropolitan gang known as the City Haute Bourgeoisie. This association would most likely have labored out high-quality, if not for the truth that each males have designs upon Beatrice (Olivia Wilde), who’s ostensibly courting Dylan however lately gave Conrad her telephone quantity after they met by likelihood on the subway. What makes The Longest Week distinctive is its sardonically whimsical tone, which is influenced as a lot by European cinema on the whole as it’s by the opposite filmmakers talked about above. (One may additionally point out Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, which has an analogous nouvelle obscure really feel.) Glanz could be very a lot conscious that he’s going to take some warmth on this entrance: Close to the top of the film, a author is requested, “How do you reply to the criticism that your novel is inherently by-product of the works of Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton?” He politely replies, “Thanks.” Exhausting to argue with that. [Mike D’Angelo]
My Man Godfrey
One of many first and nonetheless among the many better of the ‘30s screwball comedies, My Man Godfrey serves up absurdist romance and light-weight social commentary in a fizzy combine that advantages from director Gregory La Cava’s willingness to indulge improvisation, a trait he acquired from pal and frequent collaborator W.C. Fields. William Powell stars as a willful vagrant who good points employment when dizzy New York socialite Carole Lombard finds him at a riverside trash pile and provides him a job as her household’s butler. A shave and bathe later, Powell is again to enjoying the suave gentleman he exemplified all through his profession, however with a key notice of humility; in the meantime, Lombard preens, pouts, and plots to win her man’s coronary heart and stop him from being browbeaten by her mean-spirited sister (Gail Patrick). My Man Godfrey is basically assembled from asides and bits of throwaway enterprise, essentially the most amusing coming from Mischa Auer as an Italian freeloader who loafs across the household mansion, consuming and feigning a faint at any time when the topic turns to cash. The movie as an entire dances across the problem of cash, as properly, implying merely that it’s simple to get and simple to lose. La Cava is extra within the concept of accountability, which he explores by making use of the idea of “the forgotten man”—a Melancholy-era euphemism for the down-and-out, significantly those that fought in WWI—to the servants, and even to the informal acquaintances that self-absorbed swells take with no consideration. [Noel Murray]
Priceless
There’s no froth like French froth. And few French-froth-purveyors are as adept as Pierre Salvadori, who is aware of precisely methods to make romantic issues and sophistication battle as pleasantly diverting as a day on the seashore—and, for higher or worse, as placid. In Salvadori’s Priceless, Audrey Tautou performs a talented gold-digger within the Holly Golightly mildew who errors resort-hotel worker Gad Elmaleh for a swell. They share an evening of ardour, and when Tautou returns a 12 months later, they share one other evening. However the second time round, Tautou’s well-heeled fiancé finds her out, then kicks her out. She races again to Elmaleh, who’s so smitten that he’s prepared to faucet into his financial savings and investments with the intention to give Tautou the type of life she craves. It takes lower than 24 hours for her to bankrupt him. That’s when Salvadori and his co-writer Benoît Graffin concoct a wise twist. Broke and in debt in Good, Elmaleh wins the sympathy of wealthy widow Marie-Christine Adam, who makes him her personal “stored man.” So when Tautou and Elmaleh subsequent meet in Monte Carlo, they evaluate notes about methods to be a very good gigolo. Nobody might be as absurdly servile as Elmaleh, although it’s nonetheless humorous and a little bit poignant how shortly he adjusts to being a high-end prostitute. (“I’m so used to saying sure that I don’t dare say no,” he explains.) However the true memorable determine within the story is Tautou, who at first of Priceless is so assured in her commerce that she will be able to expertly opine on how a lot the whole lot prices and the way a lot she deserves, but by the top of the movie, realizes that after years of residing off males, she hasn’t actually held onto something of price. [Noel Murray]
One thing’s Gotta Give
In One thing’s Gotta Give, Jack Nicholson performs a person who’s worlds aside from Warren Schmidt, however who involves put on Schmidt’s information for all of the world to see. That provides a contact of gravity to Nancy Meyers’ pleasantly however deceptively light-weight movie, a romantic comedy that takes a uncommon tack by leaving its characters completely different from the way it finds them. Nicholson begins the movie as a person comfortable to maintain reminders of growing older at arm’s size: He’s driving to a romantic Hamptons weekend with girlfriend Amanda Peet, the newest in his string of nubile twentysomethings. However their getaway is interrupted by the arrival of Peet’s playwright mom, Diane Keaton, then by a gentle coronary heart assault that leaves him recuperating within the latter’s seashore home. The setup is about as apparent as they arrive, however Meyers steers away from romantic-comedy clichés till she has no different alternative. However largely, it’s only a pleasure to look at Keaton and Nicholson studying new steps in an outdated dance, stumbling to seize at happiness earlier than it’s too late. [Keith Phipps]
To Catch A Thief
In Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief, Cary Grant performs a former hero of the French resistance who can’t fairly persuade a skeptical world that he’s mended his methods and deserted his glamorous outdated existence as a diamond thief for a lifetime of easy, authorized pleasures. Grant’s prison historical past works in opposition to him in that respect, however it’s additionally fairly doable that the movie’s characters would fairly inhabit a world wherein Cary Grant is a debonair worldwide jewel thief than one wherein he’s a mere retiree content material to whereas away lazy afternoons tending his backyard. With the doable exception of “undercover agent,” “continental grasp thief” looks like the one job worthy of Grant. As befits a film with a protagonist nicknamed “The Cat,” Thief proceeds with feline grace, a blissful light-footedness that appears easy sufficient, however may solely have been achieved by a grasp working at peak type. If nothing else, Thief is a lesson in charisma courtesy of Grant and Grace Kelly, reluctant lovebirds who discover love in larceny and larceny in love. [Nathan Rabin]
Extra from The A.V. Membership
Join The A.V. Club’s Newsletter. For the newest information, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.