There was a time when Hollywood knew how to make audiences feel joy — leaving us lighter as we left the cinema than when we walked in.
Films today can still stir emotion, but the optimism they once offered has grown rare. Movies are more convenient than ever, with most stories reaching us through streaming — but the experience has thinned. The TV screen glows cold in our living rooms, now just one of many designed to distract us. We no longer sit in the dark beside strangers, sharing the same breath when the lights go down. The ritual has been replaced by access, and something vital has slipped away.
As that experience disappeared, so too has the romance and tenderness that once lived in works by directors like Rob Reiner, Nancy Meyers, Nora Ephron, Sydney Pollack, Cameron Crowe, James L. Brooks, and Garry and Penny Marshall. Their films held on to that optimism without pretending everything was fine. Even afternoon light through a kitchen window could signal a turning point.
Studios now seem to chase only what appears most marketable, where big budgets, star power and box-office potential can outweigh the story itself. Everything feels heavy now, as if warmth has gone out of fashion.
Streaming accelerated that shift. The economic engine that once supported mid-budget films through long theatrical windows, DVD sales and cable TV rotation disappeared almost overnight. Studios now prioritize tentpoles that guarantee immediate returns, while films that could be made for $30 million or $40 million have nowhere to go. The feel-good film didn’t vanish by accident. The financial foundation collapsed.
In projects that do receive major studio backing, you can feel that shift in tone. Even the most celebrated films often reveal a sense of withholding. Guillermo del Toro’s new “Frankenstein” is beautifully crafted, its dialogue elegant and its cinematography breathtaking. It offers a true cinematic experience, but lacks any deeper emotional honesty. I found myself admiring its artistry but struggling for a connection with its characters, a resonance that never fully arrived. It’s not meant to be a feel-good film, of course, yet its popularity hints at the empty emotional landscape we have come to accept, on-screen and off.
When Reiner, among the great architects of feel-good movies, died earlier this month, the nostalgic outpouring for his work was a welcome reminder of the radiance he brought to cinemas. We also recently lost Diane Keaton, whose films gave permission to be complex. She could move through romance with wit and vulnerability, her white shirts and loose ties a declaration of her unapologetic self. The late Robert Redford shared her same romantic spirit, with a charm that could make you feel good even when the story broke your heart.
These legends belonged to a time when the feel-good film wasn’t dismissed as lightweight. Actors like Keaton and Redford, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Teri Garr, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep gave themselves over to characters built on vulnerability and on the small nuances of everyday life. And scores by John Williams, Hans Zimmer, John Debney and Robert Folk were the heartbeat of their stories.
“If my movies were not comedies, they would be tragedies,” Nancy Meyers, director of “Something’s Gotta Give” and “The Holiday,” once told Parade magazine. “I give them happy endings because I want life to turn out that way.”
Many of us still return over and over to the classics that make us feel good as the world has grown cynical and become skeptical of pleasure. Art is expected to diagnose rather than delight. Celebrating films like “Anora” and “Oppenheimer” reflects that impulse, confronting emotion with immense weight and restlestness.
In losing that lightness, Hollywood has lost its empathy.
There is a cultural vacuum now. The town once known for making dreams come true now seems unsure of whether dreaming is even allowed. Scripts feel anxious and cold, filtered by algorithms. Yet the audience still wants to believe goodness matters and wants stories that remind them of who they hope to become.
Hollywood has always reflected its time. During the Depression, “It Happened One Night” and “Top Hat” offered an escape. In the ‘70s, “The Way We Were” and “Annie Hall” showed that love could break your heart and still be worth it. In the early ‘80s, “Tootsie” proved that honesty could survive uncertainty. By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, films like “When Harry Met Sally…” and “Sleepless in Seattle” showed that connection itself could shape a love story. “The First Wives Club” reminded women that the end of a marriage did not mean the end of identity. After 9/11, “Love Actually” brought comfort to a world trying to find balance.
Imagine the town finding that heartbeat again, with studios backing stories built on sincerity and filmmakers who, like Reiner and Meyers and Ephron, see comedy and romance as vital.
A great feel-good film captures moments of honest human dialogue and highlights the parts of ourselves we often keep hidden. The best of them last because they are built on something elemental: the belief that connection is still possible.
Perhaps if Hollywood remembered that, the town might find its pulse again. The world might too. People still arrive with hope in their hands. They want to believe that stories can save them, that light can still fall in a way that makes everything seem possible. The feel-good story never really left. It is waiting for someone to turn the camera toward it, and that is why we keep looking up at the screen, believing that for a moment, life can turn out right after all.
Alixandra Kupcik is a writer and performing artist based in Los Angeles.
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