The Thing About Harry satisfies our desperate craving for queer romantic comedies

Freeform’s The Thing About Harry is exactly the romantic comedy we’ve been waiting for, and here’s why we need more movies like it.

Before watching The Thing About Harry, I didn’t realize how much I was missing out on romantic comedies. Like most children of the ’90s, I grew up during the 2000s rom-com boom and watched Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Lopez, and Jennifer Garner fall in and out then back in love again with some hunky heartthrob who’d probably later rebrand and win an Oscar. But those movies, as I’ve realized, never made me feel the way I’d been meant to feel.

Cut to 2020, when Freeform decided enough was enough and we needed a good, queer romantic comedy. The Thing About Harry mixes the Hallmark Channel simplicity with the early aughts rom-com sensibility to give visibility to a community that largely doesn’t see themselves in this world unless its a witty sidekick, or even onscreen unless it’s a story about tragedy or coming out. Not here. Finally, our desperate craving for a queer romantic comedy has been satisfied.

(This post contains spoilers from the film from this point forward.)

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The Thing About Harry stars Jake Borelli as Sam, a college student who’s forced to give a ride to his high school enemy Harry (Niko Terho) on a road trip back home for a party. Sam and Harry learn a lot about each other during their car ride, including Harry’s coming out as pansexual, which comes as a shock to Sam, given Harry’s history of poking fun at him in high school. After the hometown party, their paths continue to cross until a brewing friendship blossoms into a complicated romance.

While the film doesn’t reinvent the romantic comedy wheel here, it’s an inescapable landmark for LGBTQ+ representation in the genre (please share some others in the comments), and it’s something we have needed for a long, long time. Gay characters, often played by straight actors, are typically the “eccentric” voice of reason, the comic relief, and butt of jokes in these movies. They’re meant to quip about J. Lo’s bad choices and questionable outfits. Freeform does away with that worn and torn trope.

It’s remarkable to watch a queer love story play out without stereotypes or themes of shame or trauma or anything else unique to the queer experience. Sam and Harry aren’t looking for acceptance from anyone in their lives. They simply exist as they are, unapologetically, and instead look for love. It’s their world, and heternormativity doesn’t have a place here. Well, except for in a game-changing twist and the final act’s pivotal straight wedding.

Like any romantic comedy or movie in general, The Thing About Harry has its flaws. I struggled with the dialogue, which was peppered with a lot of combative language from Sam that somehow wound up a charming quirk rather than a mark in Harry’s con column. But I also struggled with the twist that found Harry and Sam’s best friend Stasia (Britt Baron) sleeping together and embarking on a relationship, thus tainting their friendships with Sam during one fateful brunch.

What initially registered as an appeal to non-queer viewers softened into the bisexual and pansexual representation that too frequently falls through the cracks. Feeling slighted by Harry and Stasia’s fling, or even Stasia’s pantsuit wedding to Harry’s roommate Zach (Japhet Balaban), was a side effect of hetero-heavy rom-coms past. Still, The Thing About Harry left me with bittersweet pangs of longing, hope, and happiness. I felt seen and understood. I felt emotions that were completely foreign from a romantic comedy viewing. You can’t put a ratings figure on that kind of response.

I will always love How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Sweet Home Alabama, The Wedding Planner, and 13 Going on 30, but The Thing About Harry hit differently. For me, those movies could never inspire anything other than laughter, lust for unattainable straight leads like Matthew McConaughey, and an undying appreciation for the starring actress. I couldn’t completely connect to the story, and it took connecting to a romantic comedy story for the first time to recognize that unfortunate truth.

Recently popular queer films like Call Me By Your Name, Moonlight, and even Love, Simon (again, leave more in the comments) have told pressing stories about young characters having sexual awakenings and shouldn’t be minimized. Movies with these themes, especially those centered on POC, are vital. But they aren’t in the same boat as the accessible, bingeable, fearless, and mindless comfort food that don’t serve to remind us of our origins but rather relate to our present and future.

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask to have a perfectly adequate, middle-of-the-road movie with a climactic sex scene, a grand gesture, and a whole lot of heart. Walking away from a romantic comedy with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes because I could see myself mirrored in someone who wasn’t Cameron Diaz fall in love, break up, get married, and have a baby shouldn’t be so novel. How am I just now having the thought that, “Oh… so this is what straight women feel after every rom-com?”

Everyone should be afforded that basic, mundane, everyday thwack of universality. Imagining legions of queer kids tuning into a confident LGBTQ+ love story and seeing their identities — their sexual expression — normalized couldn’t be more important. And the casual viewers who witnessed an experience unlike their own? That’s equally important. But for once, we don’t have to search for pieces of ourselves in queercoded backstories. That subtext is right there, on the surface.

Let this film be not an experiment but an indicator of where movies are headed. May LGBTQ+ folk no longer accept the bare minimum of second-long kisses, “exclusively gay moments,” and whatever other scraps Hollywood will throw our way to act like they’re doing something. The thing about The Thing About Harry is it’s a step in the right direction, and now we want a hundred more of these, please and thank you.

The Thing About Harry is available to stream on Hulu.