No Hollywood genre has been more misunderstood-or more unfairly under-appreciated-than the romantic comedy. Funny, charming, and reliably crowd-pleasing, rom-coms were the essential backbone of the Hollywood landscape, launching the careers of many of Hollywood's most talented actors and filmmakers, such as Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey, and providing many of the yet limited creative opportunities women had in Hollywood. But despite-or perhaps because of-all that, the rom-com has routinely been overlooked by the Academy Awards or snobbishly dismissed by critics. In...