Love Is In The Air

The 14 Best Black Rom-Coms To Watch This Valentine’s Day & Beyond

According to Google Trends, these are the most-searched Black love stories of the past 5 years.

Written by Team Scary Mommy
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
New Line Cinema

From Brown Sugar to Why Did I Get Married?, there’s no shortage of good quality content when it comes to rom-coms highlighting Black love stories. Which are your faves?

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Coming To America

While many people remember Eddie Murphy’s Coming To America as simply a comedy, let’s not forget the romance factor, too. Raise your hand if you’d marry an African prince.

Paramount Pictures

Love & Basketball

Yes, this is technically a romantic sports drama — but there’s a reason the “childhood friends turned lovers” trope is so well-loved... we all want in on it! Love & Basketball follows Monica and Quincy as they grow up, chase hoop dreams, and chase each other.

New Line Cinema

The Best Man

This is more of a rom-com-dram, but the hot and heavy Taye Diggs scenes should really be enough of a draw here. The Best Man, though, also offers flashbacks to wild college days and several juicy secrets just waiting to spill out.

Universal Pictures

Think Like A Man

When Steve Harvey released his book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, it flew off the damn shelves and caused quite the rumble. The movie follows a group of young singles as they follow or veer away from Harvey’s advice.

Sony Pictures Releasing

Why Did I Get Married?

When everything is terrible and tragic, there’s only one person you can rely on: Tyler Perry. Time and again, he brings the heat and the laughs while often examining some of the most mundane parts of our lives, including the age-old question, “Why did I get married?

Lionsgate

Waiting To Exhale

Romance and female friendship, along with a killer soundtrack, drove this mid-90s classic towards blockbuster success. Everyone’s mama wanted to see Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston in Waiting To Exhale!

20th Century Fox

Boomerang

Hey again, Eddie Murphy! Boomerang, while still a comedy, saw Murphy in a different role than he played in Coming To America. New York exec Graham is a bit of a ladies’ man... but one woman can change all that. Can the playboy play the long game?

Paramount Pictures

Love Jones

Following two young creatives in Chicago, Love Jones tells the relatable tale of young love and trying to decide what’s real, what’s fake, what’s just fun, and what’s meant to last forever.

New Line Cinema

Brown Sugar

When her best friend, Dre, announces his engagement, Sidney begins to wonder if she missed her chance at true romance. Brown Sugar did right what My Best Friend’s Wedding did wrong... and they did it with Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Two Can Play That Game

There are two games we all play in relationships: one is for love, and the other is for power. The all-star cast (including Gabrielle Union and Vivica A. Fox) of Two Can Play That Game illustrate the downfall of trying to have both at the same time.

Screen Gems

Just Wright

Queen Latifah and Common make Just Wright just right for Valentine’s Day viewing. With his NBC career on the line, Scott (Common) starts physical therapy and finds undeniable chemistry with his therapist (Latifah). Will he be too blinded by the seductress in the way to notice the real thing?

David Lee/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Something New

Sanaa Lathan is back. This time as a powerful account exec who has spent way too long ignoring that underlying desire for romance. Is the “Something New” simply a love life in general... or is it what is being offered to her by two seemingly perfect but wildly different men?

Focus Features

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Stella worked hard to create the life she wanted... minus the romance. A trip to decompress in Jamaica changes all that. Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg star in this late-’90s hit that literally everyone’s mom once obsessed over.

20th Century Fox

Claudine

This 1974 James Earl Jones-starring romance isn’t just any (literally) old Black rom-com. Claudine is the first film to show a real look at Black life and love in a time when Blaxploitation was the only way to find POC on film.

20th Century Fox