The Comedy of Redevelopment: Romantic Comedy, Real Estate, and the "New" Times Square

Times Square was radically redeveloped in the 1990s, becoming a key site of neoliberal urbanism, and this "new" Times Square has featured frequently in the romantic comedy. This article reads three Times Square romcoms—Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007), Friends with Benefits (Will Gluck, 2011), and New Year's Eve (Garry Marshall, 2011)—against the history of Times Square's redevelopment, arguing that they both rely on and repress Times Square's history and that the new Times Square's presence in the romcom is a product of the genre's investment in real estate: its predilection for both property development narratives and redeveloped or gentrified spaces.