Director: Anne Fletcher Stars: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. To make sure From Hollywood with Love chronicled true romantic comedies, and not comedies with romantic subplots, Meslow came up with a test to distinguish between the two: If you removed the love story from a movie, would you still have a movie? If the answer is no, then the film is a rom-com. The Proposal (I) (2009) PG-13 108 min Comedy, Drama, Romance 6.7 Rate 48 Metascore A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her visa status in the U.S. Rom-coms of the early 2000s needed some kind of zany twist, like a female protagonist who is afflicted with short-term memory loss (2004’s 50 First Dates) or is a ghost (2005’s Just Like Heaven).
Though it is far from Meslow’s favorite rom-com, he argues that What Women Want marked a watershed moment in Hollywood in which a couple simply falling in love didn’t cut it anymore. 20 Best Enemies-To-Lovers Couples In Movies & TV, Ranked. The 2000 film starred Mel Gibson as a chauvinistic ad exec who magically acquires the ability to read women’s minds. According to Meslow, the rom-com that set the tone for the early aughts was director Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want.