Romantic comedy titles tend to stick to a pretty strict formula, picking from four general fields: some kind of weak third-grade level pun (Bride and Prejudice, Made of Honor); a phrase featuring the word “wedding” (The Wedding Singer, The Wedding Planner, The Wedding Date); a song title (Sweet Home Alabama, Just Like Heaven, The Sweetest Thing); or a bland, borderline meaningless term for romance (Love Actually, It’s a Boy Girl Thing). Here, some rom-com titles and surefire pitches guaranteed to be just as good as the ones they actually make.

Love Is in the Hair

Gerard Butler plays a hairdresser who pretends to be gay to get out of the Marines, then falls in love with Jennifer Garner, the conservative talk show host whose hair he cuts. Timely!

Hush Puppies

Mila Kunis is a dog walker/vet tech/pet store manager, Paul Rudd is the rich but irresponsible playboy who needs help training his wacky bull mastiff/golden retriever/Chihuahua. Box-office gold.

Heaven Scent

Sandra Bullock is a perfume designer who discovers pheromones that she uses to catch Patrick Dempsey — but he’s already engaged to Isla Fisher! Uh-oh. Bullock almost did this movie in 1992, when it was called Love Potion No. 9 (which took its name from the doo-wop song). But if there’s one thing Hollywood loves more than romantic comedies, it’s remakes!

Four Weddings and a Wedding

Why bring in a funeral? What a downer. This way you have five wedding dresses, five stars getting married, five cute ring bearers, five teary wedding toasts. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t made a movie called 90 Weddings and just given each one a minute, like one of those Greatest Monster Truck Crashes videos on late night infomercials.

Love Hangover

This is a double whammy, because it’s a song title and covers that other Hollywood tradition: riding the coattails of an already popular movie. Slot four women into a Vegas suite on a wacky bachelorette party — top of my head, let’s say Katherine Heigl, Zoe Saldana, Kristen Wiig, and Jessica Alba — and call it a hit. (Of course, they may actually do this. Remember when Barbershop came back as Beauty Shop?)

Stairway to Heaven

If you’re stealing a song name, why not go big? It even sounds vaguely romantic, and might suck in some unsuspecting guys who think it’s a Zeppelin biopic. Throw in Ryan Reynolds as a flight attendant for Airline A (they use those rolling stairs, right?) and Rashida Jones as a pilot for Airline B (flying the heavens, kind of?) and the conflict writes itself.

Dating Is Better Than Being Alone

Let’s be honest, this is the premise of the entire genre. Amy Adams and Josh Duhamel are co-workers at a failing ad agency who start out despising each other, and still do at the end. But they go out to dinner because hey, Lost is a rerun. Bonus: it sets up the sequel, Marriage Is Better Than Dying Alone. Franchise!

Tags: amy adams, jennifer garner, romantic comedies