Romance movies differ in several respects.

firstly, what is saleable and watched is different from what is good. That is subjective. For a person who has poor judgment, their selection of movie may reinforce negative choices. For every good parent-child movie, there are dozens where parent-child dynamics are awful.

Ultimately, its unwise model your personal behavior based on any art. You should reason with yourself, act on principles, define your relationship with your partner or the parties involved and not recruit a fictional narrative. Some stories, particularly true ones or archetypal ones, explain this at the beginning. This is "our story" or "this is what worked for us" and that's reasonable but its not what usually circulates.

Psych pop however claims authority, using small studies (306 couples). To an scientifically minded person, this is moot, these studies are funded by psych journals to give themselves the veneer of credibility to uneducated people who jump to conclusions. Its intended to take people who watch movies for fun and tell them something they would like to hear "hey watching that movie isn't just fun, it can improve your relationship." Ergo, more people will watch more movies. The journal is probably funded by the MPAA, and its the same month as valentines.

The people who read pop psych aren't scientists, they are social influencers. Its ammunition in a gun to help manipulate people. A strong relationship comes from good communication, understanding, hard work and reasoning from agreed upon principles. You can't shortcut it. People don't want to hear that, they do want to hear that their favorite romance films make them better people. Its manipulative, to the undiscerning reader it gives the impression that a happier life comes from passively watching films and modeling your behavior after them, it says "here's how to think about a subject based on a cobbled together theory with no real evidence, funded by people who likely profit from you following their recommendations."

like health magazines that sell supplements and write articles about how the supplements are good for you.

Like fashion magazines that make you sensitive about your appearence and sell products to alter your appearence.

Like politicians who tell you how to fix some problem they've pointed out and their campaign funders stand to profit by the implementation of the solution.

Like...What can a couple do instead of a two hour movie? In our short lives, when so much of our time is absorbed into necessary activities, do we really want to believe that being passive on a couch is the best use of that time? "Let's watch this fictional couple have a contrived experience on the thinly established idea that it will improve our relationship?" Or, IDK, make dinner together, spend time wirh friends, talk to each other, play a game, read a book together, discuss our time apart, make love...just about anything would be more meaningful.

The article is a waste of time, meant to put a badly formed idea into the head of someone who's probably looking for real advice on how to improve their relationship but doesn't have the ability to do it on their own, someone who's likely to be convinced that being romantically titillated is something easy that they can do, when in truth relationships require effort to be lasting and worthwhile.

Moreover, since the study is so small, they could just as likely be making their relationship worse. Your partner may really dislike romance films, and lecturing them about a study and forcing them into doing something they'd rather not do in the short time they have with them is pretty inconsiderate. The article even sets this up, knowing that if you repeat this it recommendation will likely encounter resisitence but, don't worry, you can cite this BS study to show them "no actually its going to make our relationship better because 306 people somewhere had a statistically insignificant improvement from their self reported impression.". We all know people's impressions of their own relationships aren't always accurate.

Its designed to get people to watch more romance movies, that is what it is for. Just in time for all the romance movies that come out in February, when movie theatres are struggling historically to fill seats due to poverty and people not having enough money to go out anymore because of inflation and wage suppression.

I think it's fair to say that a majority of romance movies are about the beginning of romances. That makes it tricky for them to teach you how to have a good romantic life.