Netflix has thrilled rom-com fans with its latest original film, leaving them weeping messes but declaring that the genre is ‘so back’.
Voicemails for Isabelle is being declared one of the best rom-coms in ages after dropping on the streaming platform on Friday and offering an opportunity for a good cleansing cry.
Starring the delightful duo of Zoey Deutch and Love, Simon’s Nick Robinson, the film follows chef Jill (Deutch), who copes with her sister Isabelle’s (Ciara Bravo) death by leaving lengthy voicemails, chronicling her chaotic life in San Francisco, on her sibling’s old number.
But when Isabelle’s number is unknowingly reassigned to real estate agent Wes (Robinson), he starts listening to the hilariously confessional messages – and falling for Jill.
It’s one of those perfect suspend-your-disbelief rom-com set-up scenarios, where you can rest assured that the guy learning about her life is both handsome and not a creepy stalker. He is also, of course, perfect for Jill.
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Yes, Voicemails for Isabelle sounds like it shares a fair bit of DNA with You’ve Got Mail (winkingly referenced) and While You Were Sleeping… but they’re genre classics for a reason.
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Ahead of reviews being published, there was already a fair amount of excitement around the movie, with Cinemablend predicting it had the ‘potential to be one of the great romantic comedies on the 2026 movie schedule’.
And it turns out they were correct. At the time of writing, Voicemails for Isabelle holds a remarkable 85% rating from critics on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes – far higher than the usual, often rotten reaction to this type of Netflix fare – while fans have been completely charmed too, ranking it at 92%.
Professional reviews described it as ‘the real deal’ as critic Tina Kakadelis enthused: ‘If Voicemails for Isabelle marks the beginning of a rom com renaissance, we are surely in good hands.’
‘Voicemails for Isabelle has a high emotional IQ, a romantic journey you’ll want to follow, and a real sense of the lunacy that makes life hilarious—even when we’re hurting,’ wrote Sherin Nicole for RogerEbert.com.
Meanwhile fans on Rotten Tomatoes were busy hailing it an ‘instant classic’ andsaying they would ‘100000/10 recommend’.
‘Voicemails for Isabelle really brought back romcoms. I laughed, cried, smiled. Best Netflix movie in a while,’ posted Io on X, while @paipixx added: ‘I haven’t felt this much joy from a rom-com in a long time.’
‘I just watched Voicemails for Isabelle and I’m a sobbing mess, rom-coms are so back,’ tweeted Shruti, with @vcrqueenjen agreeing: ‘Honest to God best romcom I’ve seen in quite some time.. I bawled, Voicemails for Isabelle was wonderful and definitely caught me by surprise.’
‘Voicemails for Isabelle has given me hope for rom-coms,’ chimed in Jaxon. ‘True romcoms are soooo back!!!’
Leading lady Deutch has also been making a real name for herself in this genre thanks to past winning efforts like 2018’s Set It Up (opposite Glen Powell) and 2022’s Something From Tiffany’s (with Kendrick Sampson).
And so much so that she’s been generating comparisons to the rom-com’s true queen Meg Ryan, with T3 claiming she’s ‘one of the few actors who can hold a candle to Ryan’s level of chutzpah’, while a fan on Instagram insisted: ‘If there’s a modern rom-com Mount Rushmore, Zoey Deutch absolutely deserves a spot on it.’
It’s also quite cute that Robinson’s Wes is seen passionately defending Ryan’s frequent co-star Tom Hanks (also in Sleepless in Seattle together) as ‘America’s sweetheart’ before his pals immediately snap back: ‘You are not Tom Hanks!’
Written and directed by Leah McKendrick, Voicemails for Isabelle also stars Nick Offerman, Lukas Gage and Glee actor Harry Shum Jr.
‘Zoey Deutch’s reign as Gen Z’s rom-com queen continues’: Voicemails for Isabelle review
By Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Chief Critic for Metro newspaper
Who leaves voicemails any more? This cute rom-com may just bring them back. Jill (Zoey Deutch) and her little sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo) have always been best buddies. As kids they cooked up crazy things together in the kitchen.
As they grew up, Jill kept Isabelle entertained with juicy voicemails about her romantic failures that let her sister live vicariously through her love life – because Isabelle has cystic fibrosis.
Ah, you may be thinking: it’s one of those weepie medical rom-coms. Neat thing is, the characters are thinking it too. ‘You’re being so dramatic,’ Isabelle scolds Jill whenever she panics about her health. This is not A Walk To Remember.’
‘But is it a Fault In Our Stars?’ Jill asks. Just two of an over-abundance of movie references to the point where you want to shout: write your own rom-com already!
Fast forward past the sad bit (yes, you’ll well up) and we get to the meat of the story. Grieving for ‘the love of my life,’ Jill endures more disastrous dates before swearing off men.
She does, however, keep leaving voicemails for her dead sister, not knowing that Isabelle’s number has been reassigned to the new work phone of a hot, lonely stranger called Wes (Nick Robinson). Listening to the messages, Wes falls for Jill and vows to track her down. ‘Oh my God – this is like a sick, sick reboot of You’ve Got Mail,’ eye-rolls Wes’s mate.
Well, exactly. It’s your classic missed-communication setup, powered by a ticking dramatic time bomb: at some point, Wes must confess he’s been creepily listening to Jill’s innermost thoughts, and everything will explode.
Zoey Deutch continues her reign as Gen Z’s rom-com queen. Yet despite her lovably messy, girl-next-door charisma, she’s not quite the new Meg Ryan any more than Robinson is the new Tom Hanks. Their onscreen chemistry is… passable.
Still, it slips down easily enough, with some sharp observations about the hideous complexities of modern dating in an age where break-ups seem suspiciously filtered through ChatGPT.
And if grand romantic lines like ‘I don’t really have the tools for this, but you make me feel brave’ can’t hold a candle to ‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her’, it still shows real flashes of original promise.
McKendrick has also revealed the true-life inspiration behind the movie she pens – and that’s her own sister, still alive and well, Olivia Isabelle.
‘It was based on a love for the fact that my sister taught me how to love. And she taught me how to identify true love in the world. And when you have a soul mate, from four years old, when my sister was born, you know what that looks like,’ she told Forbes.
The filmmaker also revealed that the voicemails part of the movie came, unexpectedly, from a comedy night, where her then-roommate spoke about the rambling voicemails her father left, before the next act riffed on that by saying it was nice her father called her back, as they’d been waiting three years – because he was dead.
‘I thought that’s so funny, that this girl keeps waiting for her dead dad to call her back, and then I was like, “If my dad dies, I’m not going to wait for him to call me back, because he doesn’t call me back now, and he’s alive,”‘ she recalled.
‘And then I was like, “If my sister were to die, I would be waiting every day for her to call me back.” And then I thought, “No, if my sister were to die, I would keep calling her.” And that was how it was born, literally in the audience, sitting at this comedy club.’
‘It’s my love letter to sisterhood, even the sisters that we choose.’
Voicemails for Isabelle follows hot on the heels of Netflix’s most recent rom-com Office Romance.
Written by and starring Brett Goldstein, it gave another megastar of these types of movies – one Jennifer Lopez – a bit of a cheeky NSFW edge to sink her pearly teeth into.
And with 2026 kicking off with the streamer’s popular Emily Henry adaptation People We Meet on Vacation, long may our hungry hearts be fed by Netflix.
Voicemails for Isabelle is streaming now exclusively on Netflix.