23 Movies That Are Considered Romantic But Are Actually Low-Key Soooooooooooo Toxic

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30-04-2025

Reddit user phantom_avenger recently asked the members of r/moviecritic, "What movie is considered 'romantic' when in reality it's very toxic?" People quickly filled the thread with their hot takes on beloved rom-coms and other supposedly "heartwarming" films (that perhaps didn't age so well). Here's what they shared:
1. " 50 First Dates. She's incapable of having any romantic relationship because of her condition, and he basically took advantage of a woman with a mental disability. Imagine the absolute torture she endures daily, waking up to realize she has a husband and child she's completely incapable of remembering. She will have to endure that torture the rest of her life."
2. "How about While You Were Sleeping? She literally allows the man and his family to think she is his secret fiancée, and then she falls for his brother. WTH?"
— Animated-Opinions24
" Sandra Bullock works for mass transit and saves a regular rider, whom she has a crush on, after he was mugged, but he ends up in a coma. His family thinks she's his fiancée, and she just goes with it. She falls in love with the coma guy's brother after spending so much time with his family. After the coma guy wakes up, they work up to his wedding while everyone thinks he has amnesia since he doesn't recognize Bullock, only to have her back out last minute confessing everything, and she ends up with the brother in the end."
— ManateeGag
3. " Mrs. Doubtfire. It turns out that Daniel was always capable of being a good parent and taking actual care of the family; he just chose not to until his wife got fed up. Then, instead of accepting that being a lazy man-child has consequences and trying to prove himself the right way, he commits fraud and deceives this entire family and the court. Still one of my favorite movies though."
4. " Never Been Kissed. A teacher has feelings for a student, yet is angry she 'lied to him' about being an adult undercover in the school."
5. " Big. It's a young boy trapped in a man's body. He kisses and has sex with a woman, and then, after she learns the truth, she still wants to be with him when he's older. I enjoyed the story when I was younger, but it left a bad taste in my mouth after rewatching it. Who thinks of and writes that stuff?"
6. " Overboard. Kurt Russell kidnaps Goldie Hawn and forces her into domestic slavery."
— AdWonderful5920
"This. I remember watching that movie when I was a kid (I was born in 1993, so I saw this movie sometime in the 2000s), and I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that he kidnapped her, and she stayed with him?"
— mh0326
7. " Four Weddings and a Funeral. Carrie (Andie MacDowell) is awful to Charles (Hugh Grant). She invites him wedding dress shopping when he clearly fancies her, and this is after they have slept together, and then invites him to her wedding too. Then she shows up to his wedding, assuming this is unexpected based on his reaction, and then blows that up. She is a horrible, self-absorbed, narcissistic person. 'Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed.' WORST line delivery EVER!!"
8. " My Best Friend's Wedding. I'm glad she didn't get him in the end."
— cbunni666
"I just feel bad for Cameron Diaz, who DOES get him in the end. Dermot Mulroney's character is awful. He continues to openly flirt with Jules, and one of his marriage conditions for his 20-year-old fiancée (he's 30) is that she quit college to follow him around as he writes about baseball. While Jules is terrible, she's kind of doing the girl a favor by trying to split them up."
— DumpedDalish
9. " Dirty Dancing. Baby was like 17, and Johnny was like 25. It was completely inappropriate, and whether he knew it or not, he was taking advantage of an extremely naive teenage girl who was still in high school. I get that it was her coming-of-age story, but what parent wouldn't be trying to keep their teenage daughter from hanging out with a bunch of adults almost 10 years older than her, who were hanging out all night drinking and partying?"
10. "The two main characters of Serendipity are lucky to be played by John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale who have so much chemistry because they are awful people screwing over their committed partners for a second chance at capturing the magic of a single evening years prior."
— GonzoJackOfAllTrades
"It irritated me that both dumped partners seemed like good people, but the movie makes them appear boring to justify the cheating."
— TheKidintheHall
11. " The Time Traveler's Wife. An extradimensional time-traveling nudist cat burglar grooms a child to marry him when she comes of age, then traumatizes her by getting himself shot while breaking into somebody's home to steal their clothes."
12. " Sweet Home Alabama. She chooses the man who refused a divorce for 15 years and was disrespectful to her for most of the film. The same could be said for The Notebook. They agreed on nothing, and Ally was slapping him regularly. Very toxic love that was packaged as a fantasy."
13. "I can't stand The Notebook. It's just a horrible movie that portrays toxicity as romance. I had a friend in college who was shocked that I hadn't seen it (I'm a big fan of romcoms), and we watched it together. I was stunned the entire time, and afterwards she told me she felt like her relationship with her boyfriend was like the one from the movie. I expressed concern because of how toxic the relationship in the movie is, and she got so defensive of the movie. I was shocked."
14. " Almost Famous. You can 'different time' me all you want. Penny Lane and other 'groupies' were 15, 16, and 17 years old and were being groomed and preyed upon by much older men. Penny Lane was literally sold in a poker game. That's sex trafficking. William is a 16-year-old who is also being groomed and preyed upon for the band's positive PR. But we ignore all that because of the music and the 'romance.'"
15. "(500) Days of Summer. I can't believe people still think it's a cutesy romance flick."
— snapchatofdoriangray
"Anybody who gets that from it isn't paying attention. He's in love with Summer as a concept, not a person, and she goes along with it after making it clear that they're looking for totally different things in life. It's a bad idea from the get-go."
— Iron_Infusion_
"I was a senior in high school when this came out and was taken in by the twee hipster aesthetics, and was disappointed by the ending at the time. I think it's an excellent movie because it plays with viewers' expectations of romance and romantic comedies. Like many of us, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character seems like someone raised on romantic comedies and projects their idealized expectations onto the people he dates. Looking back, it's interesting to see how his expectations (and the viewers) colored the perception of his and Deschanel's interactions."
— PothosLeaves
16. " Notting Hill. Hugh seems to like to play these men in toxic relationships. Julia's actress character treats him like crap too, ghosting him, lashing out, cheating on her boyfriend with him, and faking being a meat eater. Red flags everywhere."
— waldo-doggie
"It has its cute moments, but when he had to act like an interviewer when he was supposed to be meeting up with her was absolutely cringe. No guy would tolerate even half the crap he put up with."
— HeatCompetitive1556
17. " You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks is a catfish."
— omega_grainger69
"It wasn't enough that he bankrupted her, but he also used her own information to manipulate her and then love-bombed her into saying yes to a relationship. Like, how many more red flags do y'all need?"
— Paperspeaks
18. " Crazy, Stupid, Love. The 'never take no for an answer' messaging of that movie is really hard to watch in hindsight."
19. " Sleepless in Seattle is a horror movie."
— Several_Oil_7099
"Meg Ryan's character throws away her fiancé because she fell in love with someone she'd never even met in person and never even spoke to until the very end of the film?"
— Immortalyti
20. " Love, Actually. The movie is just 90% limerence, stalking, fat-shaming, workplace harassment, and general misogyny. There's a 'fat joke' approximately every two minutes of the movie, most about a slim, beautiful young woman, with the rest said as cruel insults directly to overweight characters' faces. The two plots involving lead female characters are depressing — a wife with a cheating husband, and a woman who is dumped by her date when she takes a call from her unwell brother. Echoing the other men, even the little boy doesn't actually know the girl he 'loves' and has never spoken to her. It's just so toxic, and it's depressing that it's so beloved."
21. " Something Borrowed. Who knew that infidelity and betrayal were cute? Damn weirdos."
— Perplexed_n_stressed
"It's about best friends where one friend lusts after the other friend's man. I didn't think Kate Hudson's character did anything wrong, but they made her out to be the bad friend."
— Klutzy-Chocolate710
22. " Runaway Bride (1999). Julia Roberts's character was such a pick me girl; it was awful. And she did it to her best friend, too, flirting with her husband unapologetically just because he was her ex. She even gets called out by Richard Gere's character. She loved to feel loved and special, but she didn't care who got hurt once she grew tired of them. She ran away from them before the wedding because her character had a strong fear of commitment. The worst character ever. Extremely selfish."
23. Finally: " Grease. Danny disrespects Sandy to her face, cheats on her in the dance competition, forcibly kisses her afterwards, and never apologizes or acknowledges what he did wrong. And then at the end, Sandy is the one who's supposed to change for him?"
What do you think? Do you agree? Do you vehemently disagree? Are there any movies you'd like to add? Explain your reasoning in the comments or tell us about a "romantic" movie you think is toxic in this anonymous form here.