All-Time Best 80's Rom Coms
I love a list. Right now, I have at least five cooking. The universal, “Things to Order Online list.” My “Get it Done NOW” list, for which I applaud clean out the garage for claiming top honors 59 weeks in a row. Clearly, the Taylor Swift of tasks.
But today, I wanted to dust off one of my favorite lists. Best Rom Coms of the 80s and marry it with something deeply personal, my novel.
I was born in 1975, early enough for bell bottoms and right on time for the arrival of history’s best rom coms. The 80s brought us such faves as Baby Boom, Splash and The Money Pit, just to name a few.
As I wrote Unverified, it was the level of this decade’s rom coms that inspired me most. I tried to distill them into my writing style and pay homage to them in my story arcs.
Here’s a sneak peek of what you might find, if you go looking for it.
We’ll start with Mystic Pizza. Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, and Lili Taylor are delicious in this story. The fact that the movie had three working storylines made me love the importance of the sub plot, something not always seen in rom coms, and, when done, potentially distracting. I wanted to create arcs that might intrigue and surprise you just as they had in every slice of story in this film.
Next up, Working Girl. Let me start by saying, this film is one of my greatest sources of fashion inspiration, outside of Troop Beverly Hills. Both still inform my wardrobe choices today. Not even kidding. Hello shoulder pads. Tess McGill, Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl, introduced me to the role reversal and the web of lies that a well-intentioned and well-heeled lead character just might get ensnared in to keep the fable alive. Like every pair of clip-on earrings Tess wore in this movie, I love a good mistaken identity.
Can’t Buy Me Love sold me on the magic that happens when two leads come together in a long con and all the ways that scheming just might spin sugar into gold for our plot.
Because I can’t think of a bigger adventure than falling in love, I give you Romancing the Stone. Joan Wilder, played by Kathleen Turner, shows us what happens when we are pushed out of our comfort zone and down the side of a mountain in heels and a pencil skirt. In Unverified I tweak the description of adventure, but it’s there. One of my readers wrote me this: “When the book begins, we’re on a Sunday Drive enjoying the scenery. But suddenly, we’re careening down the side of a hill at 120 miles per hour white knuckling the dash, laughing as the landscape flies by.” I think Joan would approve.
Sixteen Candles, the Holy Grail of the category, gave us Jake Ryan, so handsome he still hangs in my top ten crushes of all time, and Samantha Baker, played to perfection by Molly Ringwald, the champion for awkward girls everywhere. But, it makes the list today for the man behind the camera, John Hughes. If I close my eyes right now, I can still see his iconic scenes. I wrote Unverified so you’d feel like you were watching it just as much as reading it. You’ll tell me if that’s the case when you flip the first page.
Lastly, Mr. Mom. It was the first rom com I’d ever seen where the man was just as important as the woman. Michael Keaton made me root for him. I wanted my Matt to be like Jack, where we not only know him but come to love him.
Point is, the 80s were rife with so much rom com goodness that it left a generation of women hoping their dining room table was sturdy enough to hold them and Jake Ryan. It’s why I’ll never have a glass dining room table in my life… just in case.
"Immensely funny and heartwarming... delivers everything a romantic comedy requires." — Self Publishers Review
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“I couldn’t put it down. I hid out so often in the bathroom reading that my toes went numb sitting on the edge of the tub. My children started to push notes under the door asking me what was for dinner.” — Heather A., Colorado
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