JuicyTalk
There is a difference between a romantic comedy that is charming and one that makes the temperature in the room seem to rise. The steamiest rom-coms understand that attraction can be funny without becoming a joke, and that sexual tension often works best when two characters are doing everything possible to resist it.
That does not necessarily mean nudity or explicit sex. Some of the hottest romantic comedies rely almost entirely on anticipation, which is also why slow-burn stories about friends realizing they want something more remain so irresistible. The best movies like People We Meet on Vacation understand that a glance held for a beat too long can carry as much heat as a bedroom scene. Other rom-coms put sex on the table immediately and find the comedy in what happens once feelings get involved.
Will Gluck’s One Night Only, now in theaters, takes the more direct route. Its bizarre premise makes premarital sex illegal except for one sanctioned night each year, putting Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner together in a story about what happens when physical urgency runs straight into an unexpected connection. Reviews have been mixed, but the movie’s unapologetically adult setup makes it the perfect excuse to revisit the romantic comedies that understood desire could be just as funny as falling in love.
These 10 movies are ranked by how well they turn sexual tension into comedy without sacrificing the romance.
10
One Night Only (2026)
Will Gluck’s One Night Only probably will not go down as his most universally loved romantic comedy. Its dystopian conceit raises so many questions that it sometimes threatens to overwhelm the much simpler love story happening inside it. Still, putting Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner together was a very good idea.
The pair play Allie and Owen, two strangers who meet during the one night a year when unmarried people can legally have sex. What follows is much more romantic than that setup suggests. The film may be surprisingly tame considering its premise, but Barbaro and Turner give it enough flirtatious energy to earn the newest movie on this list its place at No. 10.
9
Friends With Benefits (2011)
Friends with Benefits announces exactly what kind of movie it intends to be before Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis ever get into bed together. Dylan and Jamie are attracted to each other, neither wants a relationship, and both are convinced they are mature enough to keep sex entirely separate from feelings.
Naturally, they are wrong. What keeps Will Gluck’s movie from becoming another predictable friends-to-lovers story is how comfortable Timberlake and Kunis seem together. Their banter has the ease of people who already know each other too well, which makes the eventual emotional mess much more convincing. The movie grossed nearly $150 million worldwide, but its real staying power is the pairing at its center.
8
Fire Island (2022)
Joel Kim Booster’s Fire Island takes the familiar vacation-rom-com setup and gives it a wonderfully specific queer perspective. Noah and his close-knit group of friends head to Fire Island for their annual summer trip, where hookups are expected and romance is treated with considerably more suspicion. Then Noah meets the seemingly aloof Will, played by Conrad Ricamora.
The movie is loosely inspired by Pride and Prejudice, but it never feels trapped by the reference. Booster and Ricamora build their attraction through awkward encounters and increasingly obvious curiosity about one another. Fire Island is funny about sex without treating it as a punchline, and its central romance has enough genuine tension to make the eventual payoff feel earned.
7
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Few romantic comedies begin with their leading man being dumped while completely naked, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall establishes its rules immediately. Jason Segel’s Peter is heartbroken, humiliated, and eventually learns that Sarah had been sleeping with Aldous before their breakup. It is a particularly funny spin on territory usually explored far more seriously in movies about cheating and infidelity.
Mila Kunis’ Rachel offers an escape, but their relationship never feels like a convenient rebound written into the screenplay. Their attraction builds through genuine companionship before things become physical. That gives the movie an unusual sweetness beneath all its raunchiness, especially because Peter has to become a functioning person again before the romance can really work.
6
Love & Other Drugs (2010)
Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway had already appeared together in Brokeback Mountain, but Love & Other Drugs gives their chemistry much more room to take center stage. Jamie is a pharmaceutical salesman who falls for Maggie, an artist living with early-onset Parkinson’s disease, and both enter the relationship assuming they can keep things casual.
Edward Zwick’s movie is considerably more sexually frank than most mainstream romantic comedies of its era, and Gyllenhaal and Hathaway make that intimacy feel unusually natural. The story eventually moves into heavier territory as Jamie realizes how deeply he cares about Maggie, but the attraction established early on keeps the romance from becoming overly sentimental.
5
Anyone But You (2023)
Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell spend much of Anyone But You pretending that they cannot stand each other, which is convenient because virtually nobody watching believes them. Will Gluck’s loose spin on Much Ado About Nothing sends Bea and Ben to a destination wedding where circumstances eventually force them to fake a relationship.
The setup is pure classic rom-com machinery, but Powell and Sweeney make the hostility unusually flirtatious. Even their arguments carry a charge. Audiences responded: after opening to only about $6 million domestically, Anyone But You kept finding moviegoers and eventually earned roughly $220 million worldwide. That kind of theatrical run is exceptionally difficult for a modern romantic comedy to pull off.
4
Sleeping With Other People (2015)
Sleeping with Other People begins with Jake and Lainey losing their virginity to each other in college before reconnecting years later, when neither has become particularly good at relationships. Jake avoids commitment, while Lainey remains caught up in an affair she knows is going nowhere. The solution they come up with is simple: become friends and absolutely do not sleep together.
That plan becomes harder to believe with every scene Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie share. Writer-director Leslye Headland gets much of the comedy from two people who can talk openly about sex but become completely unnerved by actual emotional intimacy. The movie is candid and genuinely sexy, yet the slow realization that Jake and Lainey have fallen in love gives it the romantic payoff to match
3
Trainwreck (2015)
Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck gives the commitment-phobe role usually reserved for men to Amy, a magazine writer who has built her adult life around avoiding monogamy. Then she meets sports doctor Aaron Conners, played by Bill Hader, and discovers that casual sex becomes considerably more complicated once she actually likes the person involved.
Schumer’s screenplay is much more candid about sex than the average studio rom-com, yet the movie never treats Amy’s sex life as something she needs to be punished for. The real problem is her fear of vulnerability. Hader is also an inspired romantic lead, playing Aaron as sincere enough to make Amy’s eventual panic over falling in love feel completely understandable.
2
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Harry Burns and Sally Albright spend years debating whether sex inevitably ruins friendship between men and women. That ongoing argument gives When Harry Met Sally… a sexual charge long before anything actually happens between them.
Nora Ephron’s screenplay understands that anticipation can be far more interesting than instant gratification. By the time Harry and Sally finally sleep together, the audience has watched their relationship evolve through years of conversations and missed timing. Then there is the Katz’s Delicatessen scene, which turned a discussion of whether men can recognize a fake orgasm into one of the most famous comedy sequences in movie history. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2022.
1
It Happened One Night (1934)
Modern audiences expecting “steamy” to mean explicit may initially wonder what a 1934 Frank Capra movie is doing at No. 1. Then Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert start sparring.
Gable plays reporter Peter Warne, who encounters runaway heiress Ellie Andrews on her way to reunite with the man she intends to marry. Forced together on the road, they spend most of the movie irritating each other while becoming increasingly attracted to one another. Because of the era, nearly everything sexual remains in the subtext, which somehow makes the tension even better.
The famous “Walls of Jericho” blanket separating their motel beds became a joke precisely because everyone understands what the barrier represents. When that wall finally comes down, Capra does not need to show the audience anything more.
It Happened One Night would go on to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Writing at the Academy Awards. More than 90 years later, its central lesson still applies: the hottest romantic comedy is often the one that knows exactly how long to make its characters wait.
