There are many new movies hitting theaters this weekend, from The Dog Stars to Coyote vs. Acme. The former is reviewing poorly on Rotten Tomatoes while Coyote vs. Acme is doing phenomenally. But now, somehow, a movie that same weekend is matching Coyote’s score.
The film is Finding Emily, a romantic comedy that has just set a Rotten Tomatoes record. As in, it is far and away the highest-scored romantic comedy of 2026 with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes review score, matching Coyote vs. Acme. That also makes it one of the best-reviewed movies of the entire year, in addition to its record score for the genre itself. Here’s where it lands on the list of the best-reviewed movies of the year on Rotten Tomatoes:
- The Furious – 98% critic score
- The Invite – 97% critic score
- Finding Emily – 95% critic score
- Coyote vs. Acme – 95% critic score
- Project Hail Mary – 95% critic score
- The Sheep Detectives – 95% critic score
- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma – 95% critic score
- The Odyssey – 94% critic score
- It Ends – 94% critic score
- Hoppers – 94% critic score
- Toy Story 5 – 93% critic score
- Obsession – 93% critic score
There may be some debate over whether or not you can consider The Invite a romantic comedy. A comedy? Yes. Romantic? Well, not even close to that in the traditional sense, so I would consider Finding Emily the only true romance on here (uh, I don’t think Obsession counts).
Here’s the synopsis of Finding Emily, which didn’t have any sort of wild standout trailer or anything, but clearly it works:
“When a lovesick musician is given the wrong number for his dream girl, he teams up with a driven psychology student to find her. Together, they spark a hilarious campus-wide frenzy that tests their own hearts and ambitions along the way.”
The idea here is that the musician is after a girl named “Emily” that he can no longer find, and goes through every Emily he can locate in order to try to reunite with her. Of course, the implication is that he may fall for an entirely different Emily helping him on his search.
The main cast is not terribly well known. Spike Fearn is the musician, Owen, who played a supporting character in Alien: Romulus and is listed as “Vandal” in The Batman. Angourie Rice, the featured Emily, may look a bit more familiar to you. She plays high school newscaster Betty in the MCU Spider-Man movies. Further back, she also played Ryan Gosling’s daughter in the supremely underrated The Nice Guys. But this is likely the biggest role for both actors. Surprisingly, the film, directed by Alicia MacDonald and written by Rachel Hirons, is not based on a book, as these types of films often are.
Box office projections for Finding Emily are pretty low for the weekend. It has to contend with long-tail hits Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. Opening this weekend, as mentioned, are The Dog Stars and Coyote vs. Acme, both estimated to have double-digit hauls. There are also a pair of horror movies, It Ends and Buddy, going wide. Finding Emily may be a rare example of a movie that may have done better if released on a major streaming service, but we’ll see. These reviews and potential word-of-mouth may really expand its reach over time.
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