Marquette is a city full of lovestruck movie-lovers, according to Redbox, which recently announced the top 10 cities in America with the highest and lowest renting rates of films in the romantic-comedy genre, ranking Marquette No. 1.

According to Redbox, which is a national movie rental provider, the cities topping the chart, aside from two in North Carolina, are all located in the Midwest.

Four of the top-rated cities are in Wisconsin, while there are also two in Iowa, two in North Carolina and two in Michigan, including Marquette and the Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo area. Seven cities in Texas and three in California were rated the least likely to rent romantic-comedies.

According to Kate Brennan, senior communications adviser of Redbox, the list of cities was ranked based on the tallied numbers of all of the Redbox kiosks across the country.

To get the accurate statistics, Redbox, focused on tallying the numbers of individual kiosks.

Redbox also has an option to rent movies through their website, but those statistics were not counted, according to Brennan.

“To ensure a larger market with more kiosks doesn’t skew the results, we calculated the average rentals per kiosk,” Brennan said.

Redbox hasn’t been the only movie rental provider in the United States that has noticed a significance of romantic-comedy rentals in the area. Marquette’s Family Video has as well.

“Valentine’s Day this year was busier than expected,” said Alison Nuemann, manager of Marquette’s Family Video. “A lot of funny and cute movies were rented.”

Nuemann said there have been a lot of romantic-comedy movies released in the last couple of years. It’s helped with the sales of that specific genre of film.

According to Nuemann, romantic-comedies that lean toward the “chick flick” sub-genre have been the most popular rentals this year. Popular titles such as, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “The Vow” and “This Means War” have been considered a few of the top-rented movies at Family Video in that genre.

Nuemann said some of the titles have a longer shelf time in the new release section because of how well they’re being rented by viewers. She also said if well-liked actors are in the movie, sales are generally going to be better than others.

Nuemann said winter weather has also potentially played a role in which rentals movie lovers pick as well.

“We want to watch something nice in the winter,” Nuemann said. “The cold weather makes us want to stay home and cuddle.”

Nuemann said action movies come in second as the most popular genre for renters.

“Anything with Bruce Willis rents well when couples come in looking for both kinds of movies,” she said.

Sundi Bennent, a sophomore community health education major, enjoys renting older romantic comedies, such as “Ghost,” or various Lifetime movies because they’re more creative and personal.

“I like them because they’re less raunchy,” Bennent said. “It’s like hand-written letters are better than emails, and I just like the idea of a tortured soul in love.”

Leah Blanchard, a junior philosophy major, said she favors some of the older classic romantic comedies.

“I like ‘Swing Time,’ and ‘Dinner at Eight,’” Blanchard said. “I like anything with Jimmy Stewart.”

For more information on the cities listed in both the top-10 most romantic and least romantic cities, go to www.redbox.com/ release20130212.