Romance that survives being watched together
Established couples and new ones want opposite things
A film about the beginning of love is delightful when you are living it and faintly abstract when you are eleven years in. A film about staying together through the dull middle is the reverse: quietly devastating if you recognise it, and slow if you do not. Neither is the better film. They are aimed at different rooms.
If you have been together long enough to have a shorthand, the sharper and sadder end of the genre will land far better than anything sold as a date-night pick.
The comfort of a fixed shape
Romantic comedies are formally rigid and that is a feature. You know roughly where the story will end, so the pleasure moves to how it gets there — the dialogue, the timing, the two performances. A romance that surprises you structurally is usually a drama wearing the wrong marketing.
Which is worth knowing on February 14th specifically. Surprise is not what the evening is for. Reliable execution is.
What ranking by audience score does here
Romance is the genre where critical opinion and audience opinion diverge most sharply, and this list follows the audience. That pushes up warm, well-made, unfashionable films and pushes down the colder, more admired ones.
If you want the acclaimed version of the genre instead, start near the bottom of the list rather than the top. The films there tend to ask more of you and give more back — just not on a night when someone is hoping to feel good.