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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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