Meet cute

A meet-cute is a scene in media, in which two people meet for the first time, typically under unusual, humorous, or cute circumstances, and go on to form a future romantic couple.

Frequently, the meet-cute leads to a humorous clash of personalities or of beliefs, embarrassing situations, or comical misunderstandings that further drive the plot.

The earliest example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Anthony Boucher's mystery novel The Case of the Solid Key (1941), in which a character says "We met cute, as they say in story conferences.

Bosley Crowther, in his February 1964 review of Sunday in New York, writes that a character "is conveniently importuned by this attractive young fellow she happens to run into – to 'meet cute', as they say – on a Fifth Avenue bus".

In Ebert's DVD commentary for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which he co-wrote, he describes the scene where law student Emerson Thorne bumps into the female character, Petronella Danforth.