The Drama (2026)

I love rom coms. Hollywood found a winning formula when it paired Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in 1934’s It Happened One Night. Doris Day, who was the subject of my undergraduate dissertation, found a way to make that format sparkle in the 50s and into the 60s. Rom coms can make me feel cosy and safe.

I hate rom coms. They are still being churned out by Hollywood, using the same old tropes from nearly 100 years ago, when gender relations and the necessity of marriage as a financially secure happy ending has also moved on. They give me the ick.

Both of these paragraphs are true. I want to find comfort in a format and formula I know and I want that format and formula to adapt to the times. I want some grit in my rom coms. I want rom coms to explore the darker side of romance and dating. I want them to pour some cold water on the idea of soulmates, and show some of the real graft of making a relationship work. I don’t believe in weddings as happy endings. I want some acknowledgement of the toxicity of dating scene, the danger of trusting strangers with your emotions and body, the superficiality of swiping for perfection. The world of romance will always have some beautiful moments. But the rom-com makes it look like romance is always high stakes, the be-all and end-all of our existence.

So, I was thrilled to hear that a new rom-com which was also a dark comedy was out in cinemas.

The Drama has cast two of Hollywood’s most bankable, but quirky stars as complicated partners, Robert Pattison as Charlie and Zendaya as Emma. They are an engaged couple on the brink of their wedding. To act as comparison to the loved-up couple we have, Alana Haim as Rachel and Mamoudou Athie as Mike, the Maid of Honour and Best Man, and a steady, established married couple. The premise is not about finding the love of your life. Instead the film asks, how do you continue to love when you’ve heard the worst a person has done?

Unlike most rom coms, the film doesn’t end with the proposal. We know from the beginning there is going to be a wedding. Charlie is preparing his wedding speech. However, the film really takes off after a drunken challenge at a wedding food tasting.

Rachel tells the engaged couple that before she and Mike married they shared the worst thing they had ever done, and goads Emma and Charlie into doing the same thing. I’m not going to share Emma’s confession. It doesn’t appear in the trailer either (although it is easily google-able). But it is a divisive story which suggests a darkness about Emma that Charlie had not seen before.

The film uses flashback and fantasy sequences to underline Charlie’s disorientated state of mind.

There is so much this film gets right, alongside strong performances. Pattison and Zendaya both handle the dark and light required: Pattison slightly better at the dark, and Zendaya better at the light.

One of my favourite bits was the ‘meet-cute’, which actually came off as creepy and stalkerish. Charlie sees the beautiful woman reading and targets her. Much more realistic than the sweet coincidence we are used to.

There was also the portrayal of Emma’s response to falling in love, which to her felt like a losing of control, rather than a fluffy, floating ecstasy.

The stakes around the wedding and Charlie’s fractured grip on his feelings for Emma rise steadily, sometimes with real comic timing and sometimes with threat and off-kilter beats. The use of fantasy sequences and a disorientating sound track add to the unsettling atmosphere.

However, occasionally the moralising comes off as heavy-handed. This means that Rachel’s character becomes unlikeable, possibly irredeemable. Having set off this spiral, she doesn’t take any responsibility, but instead continues to twist the knife. What the script lacked was a quirky best friend, a Thelma Ritter, casting sardonic side-eyes.

Overall, this is a worthwhile, macabre provocation to the genre of the romantic comedy.

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