You've Almost Certainly Never Heard of the Best Romcom of 2026

TK was supposed to review The Dog Stars over the weekend, a Ridley Scott joint with Jacob Elordi that my brain nevertheless continues to insist stars Charming Potato. His weekend got jammed up, so I volunteered, though there was honestly almost nothing I could imagine wanting to watch less. In fact, when I walked up to my theater’s ticket kiosk, I could not bring myself to buy a ticket for The Dog Stars. Anything else, my brain said. Anything. And so I chose the only other movie playing at the same time, a movie I’d never heard of in my life called Finding Emily.

When is the last time you just walked up to a movie theater and chose a random movie you’d never heard of?

Man, I am so glad I did, too, because Finding Emily — an indie romcom from director Alicia MacDonald and writer Rachel Hirons — is one of the loveliest movies I’ve seen in a very long time, and maybe my favorite romantic comedy since I don’t know when. It is buoyant, the kind of romcom they don’t make anymore: Not the McConaughey/Meg Ryan/Sandra Bullock variety. But the sentimental Richard Curtis type that hews to the formula but has a huge heart and an occasionally brilliant Cameron Crowe-like line like, “True freedom is knowing you’re cringe and still going through with it.” Honestly, there is something so punk rock about a movie that so earnestly wears its heart on its sleeve, that sticks to the formula but still manages to be about something, about characters who feel real even amidst the oversized premise.

I absolutely adored this movie.

The film stars this dorky, British character named Owen (Spike Fearn) — think young Cusack crossed with a young Hugh Grant — who works as a sound engineer at the local university. In the film’s cold open, he meets a woman in a club dressed as a fairy — an actual manic-pixie dream girl — and they immediately hit it off. They talk, and they dance, but then her friend grabs this girl because they have to run off to another engagement. Before she leaves, Owen gets her name — Emily — and her phone number, but Manic Pixie Emily is so harried that she, perhaps inadvertently, leaves off a number.

But Owen is smitten and determined to find this Emily, because he’s obviously projected onto her his ideal girl. All he knows about her is that her name is Emily and she goes to the university of 40,000 students, and so off he goes in search of her. His first stop is the registrar, who refuses to give him a list of all the Emilys in the school, but a guy standing in line tells him that the girl he’s describing sounds like Emily Raine (Angourie Rice). He goes to her psych class and drags her out, but it’s not her.

However, Emily R. just so happens to be working on her thesis — something about the attachment theory and how people in love fall under a sort of self-psychosis that compels them to sabotage their lives. She’s found the perfect subject in Owen, and so — without him knowing it — decides to use Owen as the subject of her thesis.

I’m sure you can tell exactly where this is going. Emily R. helps Owen try to find Manic Pixie Emily, falls in love with him over the course of the movie, and there’s even the perfect venue — a thesis presentation — to set the film’s climactic moment.

But that’s just the structure of the thing. There are so many bits and bobs set within it, however, that it’s damn near impossible not to fall for these characters. He does commit self-sabotage in his pursuit of Manic Pixie Emily — his Say Anything-like pursuit goes viral and half the campus thinks he’s a creepy stalker and the other half a fit softie. But Emily R. commits her own self-sabotage, too, while the actual Manic Pixie Emily stays hidden until the plot needs a third-act complication (and even the Manic Pixie Emily turns out to be a real person who has her own sh** going on).

Yes, there’s a big speech, and yes, there’s a figurative airport run, and honestly, 20 years ago, a big studio probably would’ve made this film. But all its idiosyncrasies and charm would have been worn down into a high-sheen paste. It’s so much better this way, because it doesn’t star influencers or the latest YA star, and the lines Rachel Hiron wrote that dig into attachment theory or the ethics of love remain instead of being flattened by a committee of rewrites trying to find demographically appropriate jokes for the trailer.

The pureness of Finding Emily with all its charming imperfections not only remain intact but land in a movie theater in a small city playing at the same time as The Dog Stars, which no one needed to see to know it’s bad. And in whatever small way, I can champion a pure unfiltered, authentically-written romcom for those who still have real affection for the genre. Because if you do, I hope you’ll seek this one out, either in theaters or whenever it invariably lands on a streaming service below thumbnail photos for bland, uninspired films with bigger stars cashing a check from the streaming gods. Finding Emily is a real one.