80s Romantic Comedies
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50 free 80s Romantic Comedies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 1980s gave the romantic comedy some of its best-loved films. It was the decade of the teen romance and the grown-up battle of wits, when a couple could meet on a long car ride, in a department store window or on a minor league ballfield, and when a hit theme song could matter as much as the kiss at the end. This quiz covers the films people still rewatch, including When Harry Met Sally..., Moonstruck, Splash, Coming to America, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Say Anything..., Tootsie, Working Girl, Bull Durham and Roxanne. Questions range over who played whom, how the stories unfold, where they are set, the songs on the soundtracks, the awards the films won and the choices made behind the camera. It is written for anyone who grew up with these movies or caught up with them later. The opening questions suit casual viewers, and the later ones reward fans who remember the supporting players and the smaller cult favorites.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which real Manhattan restaurant hosted the famous fake-orgasm lunch scene in When Harry Met Sally...?
Katz's Deli
Katz's Deli still hangs a sign above the table where Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal sat. The diner who orders after Sally's performance gets the scene's biggest laugh.
Q 02Which singer won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Brooklyn bookkeeper Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck?
Cher
Cher was named for the lead in director Norman Jewison's pitch for Moonstruck. The $15 million film went on to gross more than $120 million worldwide.
Q 03In Splash, Daryl Hannah's mermaid borrows which name from a Manhattan street sign?
Madison
Madison ranked 216th among American girls' names in 1990 and third by 2000, a rise widely credited to Splash.
Q 04In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy's Prince Akeem is heir to the throne of which fictional African nation?
Zamunda
Zamunda is so wealthy that Akeem has servants for everything, so he poses as a poor student in New York to find a wife who loves him for himself.
Q 05In Say Anything..., Lloyd Dobler holds a boombox over his head playing which Peter Gabriel song?
In Your Eyes
In Your Eyes replaced a Fishbone track that first scored the scene, after director Cameron Crowe decided it did not fit the mood he wanted.
Q 06Which actor plays a jobless New York actor who lands a soap role by posing as Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie?
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman suggested the title Tootsie himself, as a tribute to his mother's pet name for him when he was a child.
Q 07In Pretty in Pink's original ending, booed by test audiences, Andie chose the character played by which actor?
Jon Cryer
Jon Cryer said he was shocked when test audiences rejected best friend Duckie getting the girl. The ending was changed so that Andie chose rich kid Blane instead.
Q 08Which action star voices the inner thoughts of baby Mikey in Look Who's Talking?
Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis is heard only by the audience as Mikey, in a film that grossed about $297 million worldwide.
Q 09Can't Buy Me Love, with Patrick Dempsey as a nerd who rents a girlfriend, borrows its title from which band?
The Beatles
The Beatles song replaced the working title Boy Rents Girl once the rights were obtained. Dempsey's character pays a cheerleader $1,000 saved from a summer of mowing lawns.
Q 10Which pop star plays the drifter a bored New Jersey housewife tracks through personal ads in Desperately Seeking Susan?
Madonna
Madonna had her first major screen role as Susan, and the film's costumes drew on her own early style. Her demo Into the Groove ended up on screen too.
Q 11In Sixteen Candles, Samantha Baker's family forgets her 16th birthday because of which event the next day?
Her sister's wedding
Her sister's wedding fills the house with grandparents, who take over Samantha's bedroom and bring along a foreign exchange student. It was John Hughes's first film as director.
Q 12Which actress plays a spoiled heiress who falls from her yacht and loses her memory in Overboard?
Goldie Hawn
Goldie Hawn's socialite is taken in by a working-class carpenter she had mistreated, a widower raising four sons on the Oregon coast.
Q 13Steve Martin's Roxanne, about a small-town hero with an enormous nose, updates which classic French play?
Cyrano de Bergerac
Q 21The customer who gets the last laugh in the When Harry Met Sally... restaurant scene was played by whose mother?
Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner cast his mother, Estelle, as the nearby patron who places her order deadpan, and his daughter Tracy also has a role in the film he directed.
Q 22In Moonstruck, Ronny takes Loretta to the Met to watch which Puccini opera, which moves her deeply?
La bohème
La bohème so appealed to screenwriter John Patrick Shanley that he wrote Ronny as a bohemian, and the director took the cast to see it before filming.
Q 23Which combat sport does underachiever Lloyd Dobler train in at a gym in Say Anything...?
Kickboxing
Kickboxing gives the film its reunion: class valedictorian Diane Court comes to Lloyd's gym to reconcile with him after breaking things off.
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand's 1897 play, was a story Steve Martin admired for years before he spent several more writing his own screenplay.
Q 14Which Sex and the City star plays an ancient Egyptian who comes to life as a store dummy in Mannequin?
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall spent six weeks posing for a sculptor before filming so that the shop-window figures would carry her likeness.
Q 15Which Australian star played an Outback bushman brought to New York by a reporter in Crocodile Dundee?
Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan thought up the story on a visit to New York, wondering how a Northern Territory bushman would cope if he arrived in town.
Q 16In Romancing the Stone, novelist Joan Wilder flies to which South American country to ransom her kidnapped sister?
Colombia
Colombia is where Joan must carry a treasure map to the coastal city of Cartagena, a long way from her New York apartment and her cat, Romeo.
Q 17Which singer-songwriter won an Oscar for Let the River Run, the anthem that opens Working Girl?
Carly Simon
Carly Simon wrote, arranged and performed the song herself, and it went on to win her a Golden Globe and a Grammy as well.
Q 18Which English actor plays the drunken millionaire who falls for a woman caught shoplifting a necktie in Arthur?
Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore's Arthur Bach is on the brink of an arranged marriage to a wealthy heiress when a working-class New Yorker catches his eye in a Manhattan store.
Q 19Which actress plays Annie Savoy, the baseball fan torn between a rookie pitcher and a veteran catcher, in Bull Durham?
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon's film grew out of writer-director Ron Shelton's own years as a minor league ballplayer.
Q 20Mystic Pizza, an early Julia Roberts film about three young waitresses, is set in a fishing town in which state?
Connecticut
Connecticut really has a Mystic Pizza: the screenwriter came across the shop while spending a summer in the area. The film also gave Matt Damon his screen debut.
Q 24In Coming to America, Prince Akeem and Semmi rent a squalid tenement in which New York City borough?
Queens
Queens is where the pair pose as poor foreign students in Jackson Heights and take entry-level jobs at McDowell's, a burger restaurant with a suspiciously familiar look.
Q 25Which Motown star won an Oscar for a ballad he wrote for Gene Wilder's comedy The Woman in Red?
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder composed nearly the whole soundtrack, and I Just Called to Say I Love You took the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Q 26Which actress plays a penniless soprano passed off as a male female impersonator in 1930s Paris in Victor/Victoria?
Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews was directed by her husband, Blake Edwards, who adapted the story from a 1933 German film.
Q 27In Some Kind of Wonderful, tomboy Watts, played by Mary Stuart Masterson, is devoted to which instrument?
Drums
Drums fit the name: John Hughes called his leads Keith, Watts and Amanda Jones as an in-joke about the Rolling Stones, whose drummer was Charlie Watts.
Q 28In Baby Boom, Diane Keaton's Manhattan executive quits, moves to which state and starts selling gourmet baby food?
Vermont
Vermont is where she buys a farmhouse and turns the applesauce she made for baby Elizabeth, a surprise inheritance from a distant cousin, into a business.
Q 29Which actress plays Angela de Marco, a Long Island gangster's widow trailed by an FBI agent, in Married to the Mob?
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer earned a Golden Globe nomination for Jonathan Demme's crime comedy, and Dean Stockwell an Oscar nomination as Tony, the mobster who pursues her.
Q 30In Better Off Dead, dumped teenager Lane Meyer tries to win back Beth by tackling the K-12 in which sport?
Skiing
Skiing down the K-12, the highest peak in town, ends in a wipeout at the first attempt. Beth had left Lane for the captain of the school ski team.