Prime Video's 'Five Blind Dates' and Loudly Loving Rom-Coms
Romantic comedies deserve as much love as they provide.
Rom-coms are heavily marketed towards women, and so they are often unfairly treated in comparison to genres that are marketed towards broader audiences or, let’s be honest, men. They sometimes even slip through the cracks and avoid promotional tours, even though so much of the rom-com’s appeal relies upon the chemistry its leads have. Think of the rumors that swirled about Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell during Anyone But You’s recent press tour or those about Lana Condor and Noah Centineo during the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy.
While that speculation breaches celebrities’ privacy (Their personal lives aren’t really any of my business), the public interest the rumor mill spurs is conducive to the commercial success of a rom-com in the same way press tours with the entire cast of a Marvel movie help sell the on-screen dynamics off-screen.
Consequently, studios and marketing teams should jump at the opportunities to promote their romantic comedies during February and around Valentine’s Day. That is at least true for Lisa Frankenstein, which debuts in theaters on February 9. The teen rom-com inspired by Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel is about a misunderstood teenager named Lisa who unintentionally reanimates a Victorian-era corpse. Its stars, Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse, are doing the rounds on late-night talk shows, Who What Wear’s YouTube page, and so on.
Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda Williams, Lisa Frankenstein is even said by Cody to exist in the same universe as the cult classic Jennifer’s Body. “I am just declaring that this movie takes place in the same universe. I have decided that. I will not say that you’d see any overt references to that but I’m saying it,” Cody told Deadline. That connective tissue may help box office numbers, but so does any buzz around Newton & Sprouse and the love story between Lisa & this undead dude.
Romance sells, and it shouldn’t be a bad thing that it sells predominantly to women. Unfortunately, that has long been the case for books about romance and their adaptations. One of my favorite TikTok creators, Corinne, spoke about the misogynistic lens to commentary around The Twilight Saga in a video posted in March 2023. Corinne approached the topic through the comparison of Twilight to The Hunger Games — an ongoing and primarily false equivalency since 2012.
After expressing an understanding of why the latter is acclaimed and even critically better than the former, Corinne says:
“But the reason for all of that is not because of Twilight, though it is related, but it is because people hate women enjoying things, and people think that things that women predominately enjoy inherently lack value. And that is also the reason that the general public hated on Twilight and continues to hate on Twilight. It’s because of misogyny and because they hate women enjoying things.”
Corinne’s video, which I suggest you watch in its entirety, explains that necessary criticisms of Twilight (The embedded misogyny and racism!) aren’t as prominent in conversations as they could be because the general public diminishes the books, movies, and their fans for superficial and transparent reasons. Corinne continued:
“They hated Twilight for all the wrong reasons. They did not care enough to criticize those things or to even think about them. They hate it for “Oh, sparkly vampires and werewolf romance — stupid.” And, in general, people were too busy being stupid and misogynistic and hating things that are typical for women to enjoy, like romance, to actually make genuine, valid, and important criticisms about Twilight.
That dominant and judgemental noise around women enjoying things is often why some people can’t see that young women drive cultural interests. Young women causing Beatlemania for The Beatles is one of the most famous examples. It’s also why so many young women and other people passionate about a band, a book, or a romantic comedy hold space for each other in digital spheres like social media. There’s a community there that is far more inclusive; it allows people, including young women, to be loud about whatever they may love.
That desire to loudly love romantic comedies is why I created Notes on Nostalgia. It’s also why X (formerly Twitter) accounts like rom com archive and rom com gifs have tens of thousands of followers that consistently engage with their posts. People want to passionately engage with rom-coms — past, present, and future. Those accounts and (hopefully) this newsletter encourage people, especially the women that the projects’ promotional campaigns usually target, to love romantic comedies unashamedly. That positive buzz may not always be louder than the negative noise, but it can positively affect a movie and the broader genre.
In March 2022, Variety exclusively reported that Five Blind Dates would be Prime Video’s first Australian Amazon original movie. Co-created and co-written by Shuang Hu and Nathan Ramos-Park, the rom-com premieres on the streaming service on Tuesday, February 13 — just in time for Valentine’s Day. Despite the trailer dropping three weeks ago, there hasn’t been any promotion out of Prime Video for Five Blind Dates. There’s also barely been any promo for the Camila Mendes and Archie Reneux-led Upgraded, which debuts on Friday, February 9.
Ramos-Park took to X (formerly Twitter) shortly after the trailer dropped to explain why that’s the case for Five Blind Dates:
“Trailer just dropped for my romcom coming out in February I created with Shuang Hu on Amazon Prime! Because of the layoffs we don't have execs or much marketing so please share thank you love y'allll 🩷🩷🩷”
rom com archive shared Five Blind Dates’s trailer, reaching 79k more people.
While Notes on Nostalgia doesn’t have that level of reach (Yet!), it is a space I want to use to discuss as many romantic comedies as I can, including the ones that, unfortunately, don’t get much marketing, like Five Blind Dates. So, if this is the first time you’ve heard of this upcoming rom-com, the movie is about Lia, a twenty-something, Chinese-Australian tea shop owner, who learns that the fate of her business and her love life resides in her next five dates.
Five Blind Dates’s synopsis reads as follows:
Twenty-something Lia is stuck. Faced with her failing traditional Chinese tea shop inherited from her beloved grandma, and the prospect of attending her younger sister’s impending wedding single and alone, she is reluctantly gifted with a prophecy – the fate of her shop and her love life are intertwined, and the secret lies in one of her next five dates. Under pressure from her family, Lia agrees to be set up with five different suitors. With her best friend Mason by her side, will Lia find herself (and love), or risk disappointing those she loves the most and losing the business she has put her whole life into.
Shuang Hu stars as Lia, with an ensemble cast of Yoson An, Jon Prasida, Desmond Chiam, Ilai Swindells, Tiffany Wong, Renee Lim with Rob Collins, and Tzi Ma. I’m excited to see Chiam in a rom-com after his roles in Prime Video’s With Love and Netflix’s Partner Track — two shows canceled far too soon.
The charming trailer shows Lia going on dates with The Playboy, The Mama’s Boy, The Lover Boy, The Best Friend, and The Ex-Best Friend. Lia’s dates, some of which are handpicked by her parents, result in interesting conversations and situations, like an allergic reaction and a sunscreen mishap. The tension between Lia and her ex-best friend, Richard, is palpable, but so is Lia’s determination to save the business she inherited from her beloved grandmother. Luckily, there’s just enough time to anticipate how this story will end for Lia and share the trailer with your rom-com-loving friends before its release later this month.
Five Blind Dates premieres on Tuesday, February 13, on Prime Video. Will you be streaming?
💌 Shelby
*Featured photo courtesy of Prime Video