Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like The Love Hypothesis:
Voicemails for Isabelle
Netflix’s track record with romantic comedies has been a bit rough over the last decade, to put it mildly. More often than not, they feel cheaply assembled, half-written, or filmed entirely in front of green screens and sound stages that never quite convince you anyone actually occupied the same room together. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself skipping most of them unless they’ve either been recommended by multiple people I trust or have performers and filmmakers attached that I already enjoy. Voicemails for Isabelle lands in the latter category.
You, Me & Tuscany
Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page are both perfectly likable on their own. Bailey continues to be an incredibly empathetic screen presence, making Anna easy to root for even when the script isn’t giving her much to work with. Page remains effortlessly charismatic and underspoken, although I’ve increasingly found him more compelling playing charming antagonists, like he did in Black Bag, than straightforward romantic leads. The issue isn’t either performance individually. It’s that the movie never gives them enough meaningful scenes together to convince you they belong with one another. Chemistry isn’t something you can simply assume because two attractive actors occupy the same frame, and You, Me & Tuscany spends surprisingly little time actually building that relationship.
The Sun Never Sets
The Sun Never Sets isn’t reinventing the rom-com, and I don’t think every detour in this love triangle lands with the same force, but there’s an honesty to its messiness that I really enjoyed. Swanberg understands that adult relationships are rarely clean enough to fit neatly into a romantic-comedy structure, especially when the people involved are still carrying around all the insecurities, bad habits, and unresolved shit that got them here in the first place. Dakota Fanning is the standout, but the chemistry between all three leads keeps the movie afloat even as the characters are actively trying to sink themselves.
Regretting You
Regretting You is the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation to arrive with a lot of built-in melodrama and almost no ability to make that melodrama feel earned. After the infamous chaos surrounding It Ends With Us, I hoped this would at least land as a clean, competent tearjerker. Instead it plays limp and strangely confusing, a movie that keeps insisting it is devastating without ever giving the relationships enough shape for the devastation to hit.
The People We Meet on Vacation
Netflix has built a steady assembly line of soft rom-coms over the past few years, and People We Meet on Vacation fits the template almost too cleanly. It is an adaptation of Emily Henry’s novel, glossy and travel-poster pretty, with luxurious vacation spots doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Brett Haley has made sweeter, more grounded work in Hearts Beat Loud and All the Bright Places, but this one feels Netflix-ified into something airless and mechanical, like it is engineered to be left on in the background rather than actually watched.
Rye Lane
Few films in 2023 will reach the peaceful bliss that Hulu’s newest streamer Rye Lane does, a movie about two lost twenty-somethings recovering from painful breakups over the span of one eventful afternoon in South London. Told through an episodic lens that depicts the steps from heartbreak to a restored faith in relationships, Rye Lane is a cheerful reimagining of the romantic comedy.
Eternity
Eternity has a sweet, sentimental charm that fits David Freyne’s A24 rom-com mold, then asks a clever what-if of the afterlife. When you die, you enter a hub and choose where to spend forever. For Joan, played by Elizabeth Olsen, the question is less where than who. Freyne, working from a script co-written with Pat Cunnane, leans into humor and physical business rather than plumbing for deeper grief. The emotion largely comes from familiar highlight reels, meet cutes and proposal flashbacks that remind Joan what each love felt like in its best light. When the movie wants to go big, it does not hesitate.
Crossing Delancey
Crossing Delancey is the kind of romantic comedy that remembers what adulthood feels like. Joan Micklin Silver builds a world so specific that it becomes universal, a New York where bookstores, delis, and family kitchens carry as much weight as flirtations. The movie sits alongside the late eighties high points, close to Moonstruck and When Harry Met Sally…, yet it leans a little more serious and a little more tender.
Preparation for the Next Life
Bing Liu’s Preparation for the Next Life is a patient, unvarnished drama about two people trying to build a life together with nothing to fall back on. After the nonfiction clarity of Minding the Gap, Liu shifts to narrative without losing the documentary instincts that made his debut so piercing. You feel that in the way the camera lingers on kitchens in Chinatown, cramped rooms, and the small rituals of work and survival. The story is familiar, yet the texture is specific.
We Live in Time
A movie like We Live in Time really shouldn’t work. The overly sentimental cancer drama is a well-trodden path, with its fair share of genuinely touching entries but even more bogged down by predictability and melodrama. We Live in Time doesn’t completely avoid these familiar pitfalls, as it leans into some of the same cheesy tropes that often plague this subgenre.
READ MORE: Movies Like Voicemails for Isabelle, Movies Like Reminders of Him
