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Whether you love them or hate them, romantic comedies have been a staple of American cinema throughout the years. Although the genre often gets overshadowed by dramas during awards season and by blockbuster action flicks in the summer, rom-coms have proven to be successful both critically and commercially.
Take 1998's "Shakespeare in Love": The film beat out heavyweights like "Saving Private Ryan" to win best picture at the Oscars and raked in nearly $300 million worldwide. Of course, not all romantic comedies enjoy such success, and for every winner there are bound to be duds (see: "Gigli").
To separate the best of the bunch, PrettyFamous, an entertainment research site by Graphiq, found the top rom-coms of all time. The team ranked romantic comedies on their Smart Rating -- a score out of 100 that takes into account a movie's Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer and Audience Score, IMDb rating, Metacritic Metascore, Gracenote rating and the inflation-adjusted cumulative U.S. box office gross. Movies were required to have over 15,000 IMDb votes to qualify and ties are broken by a film's IMDb rating.
The movies in this ranking span nearly 85 years, from 1931's "City Lights" to 2016's musical "Sing Street." Although some modern films like "The Artist" crack the top 10, it's the classics that come out on top.
Note: Movie descriptions are sourced from Gracenote with minor edits.
Compiled by Alex Greer, PrettyFamous.com
