Nobody gave rom-coms that memo, though, for a long time. And it isn't true, that older women can't find love.

Leave it to Rosie O'Donnell's character to reassure Annie that it isn't true (I'm team Carrie, team Vi and team whoever O'Donnell plays, always). Take for example ' Sleepless in Seattle,' where Meg Ryan's Annie is reminded of the grim percentage. The magazine eventually retracted the story, but the sentiment got out, bleeding into romantic comedies for years to come.

More than 30 years ago, Newsweek ran a cover story with the headline 'The Marriage Crunch.' With alarmist prose and sketchy statistics, the magazine declared that a white, college-educated woman who is 40 was 'more likely to be killed by a terrorist' than to get married. Laura Dern, Sam Neill and a 'Jurassic' age difference that seems troubling now