Anyone But You

This rom-com may be too cheesy for some, but it’s charismatic leads and playful tone completely won me over.

Premise:  After a great first date ends badly, Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) want nothing to do with each other ever again … but a family wedding, some interfering relatives, and a couple of exes soon complicate matters.

Review:

I have a feeling that Anyone But You may be a bit of a Marmite, love-it-or-hate-it film, and I personally know of some people who have found it too cheesy and cliched … but I have to confess that it hit the perfect rom-com sweet spot for me.  I’ve long been a fan of rom-coms that pull off both the “rom” and the “com” parts of the equation – and I also love Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, on which this film is very loosely based – so I was probably predisposed to enjoy Anyone But You.

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell are both rising stars who are having a ‘moment’ right now – Powell with this film, Twisters and Hit Man, and Sweeney with this film, Immaculate and Madame Web all coming out in the last 12 months.  Here, they spark off each other brilliantly, from the opening meet-cute in a coffee shop, through a barbed phase where they can’t stand each other, until Bea and Ben (based on Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing) decide to fake a relationship for reasons which I won’t go into here.

“…lines from this film that have kept me chuckling for months…”

Although a couple of the comedic moments don’t quite work for me (the scene on the plane with the cookie, for example), those are far outweighed by the number of laugh-out-loud moments delivered throughout the film.  Sydney Sweeney displays an unexpected talent for physical comedy, while Glen Powell is prepared to send-up and undercut his heartthrob image – and there are lines in this film that have kept me chuckling for months, and that I still re-quote now.  Interestingly, the filmmakers decided to make this as an R-rated comedy (with plenty of salty language), which is a nice reminder that not all rom-coms have to be Hallmark-style sanitised movies.

This isn’t a film that’s trying to be realistic or grounded – lines from Shakespeare appear in the background of scenes or are inadvertently quoted by characters, and everyone’s playing in a heightened, performative reality, that captures some of the sense of theatricality that you’d get from the production of Much Ado About Nothing.  That’s perhaps not surprising given that Anyone But You comes from director Will Gluck, who made the equally heightened Easy A (which was itself partially inspired by The Scarlet Letter).

“…fun, silly & funny throughout…”

The supporting cast all appear to be having great fun – especially Dermot Mulroney and Alexandra Shipp – but even some of the relative unknown actors in this get a chance to have some great comedic moments, and I found the film to be fun, silly and funny throughout.  Overall, this film may be too much for some – but I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, and I for one think that there should be more movies that end with a cast sing-a-long over the end credits.