It’s part of a wave of films exploring love in midlife, many of them headed up by some of the most bankable stars of the romcom’s 90 and 00s golden age. Two decades on, these women, now in their 40s, 50s and 60s, are making a triumphant return to a genre that once might have written them off.

Take Reese Witherspoon’s latest effort, Your Place Or Mine on Netflix, which sees her play a single mother who ends up swapping lives with her best friend (Ashton Kutcher) and inadvertently falling into a long-distance romance in the process. Or Jennifer Lopez’s recent release, Shotgun Wedding, where the multi-hyphenate star plays a woman whose destination wedding goes seriously awry when it’s hijacked by terrorists (OK, we never said that these stories had to be totally realistic…). And later this year, Gabrielle Union will star in another Netflix offering, The Perfect Find.

Also making a major romcom comeback is Meg Ryan, the genre’s undisputed queen in the 90s thanks to roles in Nora Ephron movies such as Sleepless In Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally. Her next project will be What Happens Later, described as an “evolved and nostalgic” spin on the genre. She will play Willa, a woman reunited with an ex for the first time in decades when they both find themselves snowed in at an airport. And let’s face it, what’s a romcom without a dramatic airport reunion?

How the romcom grew up – and lured back its biggest stars, from Reese Witherspoon to Jennifer Lopez