We’ve all been there: It's a Saturday night, and you’ve settled onto the couch for a cozy movie night at home. You start scrolling through Netflix to find something to watch…and an hour later, you’re still scrolling. With a seemingly endless list of options, that kind of decision fatigue should come as no surprise—though that doesn’t make it any less frustrating when all you want to do is put something on and turn off your brain for a bit.
So, we’ve done the work for you and narrowed down your options if you’re in the mood for a perfectly cheesy, soothingly predictable romantic comedy. Next time you’re desperate to settle on something—anything—look no further than this list of 30 of the best rom-coms currently streaming on Netflix.
1. ‘Set It Up’
This may very well be the best of Netflix’s original rom-coms, with Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell playing two overworked assistants who team up to get their workaholic bosses to fall in love, in hopes of reducing their own workloads. No idea what’ll happen after all that time spent scheming together!
2. ‘Always Be My Maybe’
Another of Netflix’s very best, Always Be My Maybe stars Ali Wong and Randall Park as childhood sweethearts who reconnect as adults, 15 years and two very different career paths later. You definitely shouldn’t miss this one, even if just to witness Keanu Reeves’ scene-stealing appearance playing himself.
3. ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’
Talk about a friends-to-lovers tale gone awry: Julia Roberts plays Jules, who learns that her longtime best friend (Dermot Mulroney) is engaged to a charmingly naïve Cameron Diaz and promptly realizes she’s in love with him. She embarks on an increasingly unhinged series of attempts to break them up, culminating in a literal car chase across Chicago.
4. ‘Long Shot’
The plot of this movie is indeed a bit of a long shot: Seth Rogen plays a journalist named Fred who’s hired as a speechwriter by Charlize Theron’s Charlotte, his former childhood babysitter (and crush), who’s now the U.S. secretary of state. But it’s also kind of perfect and, since Rogen is involved, extremely funny.
5. ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’
It’s been 15 years since this movie came out, and some of us are still holding our breaths waiting for a full version of Jason Segel’s character’s Dracula puppet musical. Alas, until that day comes, at least we have the few snippets included in this sweetly funny rom-com to tide us over.
6. ‘Holidate’
This movie inspires more questions than it answers: How did they get their Chicago geography so wrong? Why do the main characters spend so much time in malls? But if you can suspend your disbelief for exactly 104 minutes, you’ll thoroughly enjoy Holidate, in which Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey agree to be each other’s dates to every holiday event for a full year.
7. ‘Love Hard’
A catfish’s unmasking is usually the end of the story, but in this case, Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) gets a second chance after promising to help set up Nina Dobrev’s Natalie with the guy who’s pictures he’d used to reel her in. A tangly, lie-filled scheme ensues, during which both Josh and Natalie—surprise, surprise—discover their true selves have a lot more in common than they’d thought.
8. ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’
This 2013 Bollywood hit follows Deepika Padukone’s Naina, a doctor, and Ranbir Kapoor’s Bunny, a globe-trotting journalist, whose seemingly incompatible lifestyles are stopping them from following their hearts and being together. It’s a classic will-they, won’t-they tale—but, in true Bollywood fashion, made all the more exciting by multiple musical numbers.
9. ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’
An adaptation of Jenny Han’s YA book series, this 2018 Netflix original was an instant hit and was followed by two sequels and a spinoff series about main character Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty. It all began with TATBILB, in which Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and her “former” crush Peter (Noah Centineo) agree to fake date to make Peter’s ex-girlfriend jealous and help Lara Jean avoid her current crush, Josh, who also happens to be Lara Jean's older sister’s ex. The start of any great love story!
10. ‘How Do You Know’
Some of Reese Witherspoon’s most entertaining roles see her playing characters who have to choose between two very different men. There’s Legally Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama, and this one, in which she’s stuck in a love triangle with Owen Wilson’s Matty, a professional baseball player who’s insensitive to her feelings and continues to see other women even after she moves into his apartment, and Paul Rudd’s George, a businessman who’s much kinder than Matty but may be heading to prison for corporate malfeasance.
11. ‘The Incredible Jessica James’
They say misery loves company, and that’s essentially the plot of this rom-com, in which Jessica Williams and Chris O’Dowd play Jessica and Boone, who are set up on a blind date after having each recently gone through a bad breakup—and spend most of their subsequent dates commiserating about said breakups.
12. ‘She’s the Man’
A modern, high school-set retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, She’s the Man takes the concept of a love triangle to its furthest possible point: Viola Hastings (Amanda Bynes), in disguise as her twin brother Sebastian for much of the film, begins falling in love with her roommate Duke (Channing Tatum), who’s nursing an unrequited crush on Laura Ramsey’s Olivia, who is quickly smitten with Viola-as-Sebastian. Got all that?
13. ‘When We First Met’
Usually the first rule of time travel is not to change anything, but that doesn’t seem to apply in this 2018 Netflix original, in which Adam DeVine’s Noah repeatedly goes back to the night he met his friend Avery (Alexandra Daddario) in an attempt to turn his unrequited crush on her into an actual romantic relationship.
14. ‘Silver Linings Playbook’
Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for her role as Tiffany, a young widow who enlists Bradley Cooper’s Pat—who’s recently moved back in with his parents after a stint at a psychiatric hospital—to help her enter a dance competition. Rounding out the star-studded cast are rom-com queen Julia Stiles as Tiffany’s older sister and Robert DeNiro, who plays Pat’s very superstitious Eagles fan father.
15. ‘The Lovebirds’
If you’re ever in need of spicing up a stale relationship, just take a page out of this movie’s book: Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani are on the verge of a breakup when they witness a murder and get roped into a larger criminal plot as they attempt to avoid blame for the killing—resulting in a hilarious series of events that ultimately bring the duo closer together. Sounds simple enough!
16. ‘Love, Guaranteed’
Dating apps don’t always work, and that’s especially true for Damon Wayans’s Nick, who’s gone on nearly 1,000 dates through a dating website that guarantees to help its users find love. He decides to sue the website (the natural next step) but in a potentially lawsuit-ruining twist, soon begins falling for the lawyer (Rachael Leigh Cook) who’s taken his case.
17. ‘Alex Strangelove’
This 2018 Netflix original is an especially refreshing take on the rom-com genre, as it follows a teenager, fittingly named Alex Truelove, and played by Daniel Doheny, who’s just beginning to explore his sexuality, perfectly capturing all the sweetly earnest moments and awkward missteps that come with the process.
18. ‘The Sweetest Thing’
This early 2000s classic has everything: a will-they, won’t-they flirty romance between Cameron Diaz’s Christina and Thomas Jane’s Peter, a hilarious buddy-comedy-style road trip with Christina and her best friend Courtney (Christina Applegate), and a crashed wedding. You’ll just have to watch it to find out if that all adds up to a happily-ever-after for Christina.
19. ‘Happiness for Beginners’
Call it Wild lite. In Happiness for Beginners, Ellie Kemper plays a pessimistic divorcée who signs up for a beginner survivalist course on the Appalachian Trail. Her solo soul-searching trip soon gets a bit less solo when Jake (Luke Grimes), a friend of her brother’s, shows up on the trip, too, and sparks reluctantly start flying.
20. ‘The Perfect Find’
Based on the novel by Tia Williams, The Perfect Find shakes up the standard rom-com. For one, it stars Gabrielle Union as 40-year-old Jenna, who, after her 10-year relationship comes to an end, strikes up a relationship with a man 15 years younger than her, played by Keith Powers. For another, it puts a whole new spin on the concept of happily-ever-after, as the film’s ending highlights several different forms of love, beyond just the romantic type.
21. ‘Love Wedding Repeat’
Weddings can often end up getting pretty chaotic, though few as much as the one in this 2020 movie, which runs through multiple scenarios in which different wedding guests are accidentally drugged with sleeping drops—originally meant for a belligerent man who crashes the wedding to expose his affair with the bride—and all of which seem to be dead-set on keeping Sam Claflin and Olivia Munn’s Jack and Dina from taking their own shot at love.
22. ‘Falling for Christmas’
We’d be remiss not to include Lindsay Lohan’s long-awaited return to the big screen on this list. It’s a perfectly corny Hallmark-style rom-com, in which LiLo plays a rich hotel heiress named Sierra Belmont who develops temporary amnesia after a ski accident and is reluctantly taken in by Chord Overstreet’s Jake, a widower, single dad, and local inn owner, whose livelihood is currently at risk due to the Belmont family business. Sounds like a recipe for either disaster—or, alternatively, cheesy holiday-tinged love.
23. ‘Wedding Season’
Similar to Holidate, Wedding Season sees two unlucky-in-love people, played by Pallavi Sharda and Suraj Sharma, who agree to be each other’s dates to all of the weddings they’ve been invited to for a summer, after meeting on a dating site that their meddling parents each signed them up for. Wonder what’ll happen as they keep spending so much time together!
24. ‘Choose Love’
If you’ve ever felt certain that you could write a better rom-com than the one you’re watching, Choose Love is for you. It’s one of Netflix’s interactive offerings, and it lets you make choices throughout the story, resulting in a variety of endings for Laura Marano’s Cami—who might end up dating or even marrying any of three potential suitors, or none at all, depending on how you direct her life.
25. ‘La La Land’
There’s a lot to love about this movie: It’s a musical! It stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling! It’s about the hard and often demoralizing work it takes to follow your artistic passions! Truly, what more could you ask for?
26. ‘The Half of It’
Another entry in Netflix’s canon of sweetly sensitive depictions of teenagers learning to embrace their queer identities, The Half of It tells the story of Leah Lewis’ Ellie, who’s hired by popular football player Paul (Daniel Diemer) to write love letters that’ll help him woo Alexxis Lemire’s Aster—a plot that gets a lot more complicated when Ellie starts developing feelings for Aster in the process.
27. ‘She’s All That’
This 1999 take on Pygmalion contains perhaps the most famous depiction in all of film of that moment in which an introverted outcast takes off her glasses, eliciting shock and awe over the sudden realization that she was beautiful all along. If you, too, want to witness such a historical moment, you better hit play ASAP.
28. ‘Ibiza: Love Drunk’
Part buddy comedy, part rom-com, this 2018 film is pure fun. It stars Gillian Jacobs as Harper, who travels to Spain on a work trip—bringing along her two best friends (played by Phoebe Robinson and Vanessa Bayer), of course—and promptly goes rogue from her work duties, taking an impulse trip to Ibiza to track down famous DJ Leo West (Richard Madden), who she met on her first night in Barcelona. Sounds like a productive business trip to me!
29. ‘Can You Keep a Secret?’
Calling all fans of Confessions of a Shopaholic: This 2019 indie film is an adaptation of another of Sophie Kinsella’s books. In it, Alexandra Daddario plays Emma, who drunkenly reveals all of her deepest, darkest secrets to her seatmate on a turbulent flight home, only to learn the next day that that handsome stranger (played by Tyler Hoechlin) is in fact her new boss. A great way to kick off a new professional relationship.
30. ‘Love Again’
The plot of this 2023 rom-com is admittedly very odd: Priyanka Chopra plays Mira, who, still in mourning over the death of her beloved boyfriend, begins texting his old phone number without knowing that the messages are going to Sam Heughan’s Rob's work phone. Rob quickly becomes determined to track down this mystery woman, but the film's plot only gets weirder when literal icon Celine Dion, playing a fictionalized version of herself, pops up to help guide Rob through the search. You’ll just have to see it to believe it.
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