An excellent essay, though you lost me a bit when you suggested that Obvious Child and Humpday were exceptions. I found them to suffer from the exact same issues you attiribute to movies like Wish I Was Here. But still overall, I think your essential theme is correct, even if we might disagree on the specificity of…

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but rom coms have been
around since the beginning of movies (and even before on stage, thank
you Shakespeare and such plays as Much Ado About Nothing and Twelth
Night). They actually reached their peak in the 1930's and 1940's and
have been successful in various…