Some Cupid Kills
If you’re not blinded by the ultra-whiteness of it all ‘Anyone But You’ is a perfect post-holiday escapist romp?
Anyone but You
Director: Will Gluck • Writers: Ilana Wolpert, Will Gluck
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, GaTa, Alexandra Shipp, Hadley Robinson
USA • 1hr 43mins
Opens Hong Kong January 18 • IIB
Grade: C+
Will Gluck’s Anyone But You is guilty of many, many things, but not understanding its core audience and the rom-com conventions that audience demands is not among its crimes. As a January slice of fluffy romantic escapism, Anyone has no interest in subversion (like the much smarter Long Shot as an example) or empowerment (like most of Jennifer Lopez’s oeuvre, no seriously, even when they’re hot garbage she rules). What it does seem interested in is any situation that gets stars Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) and Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria), also an executive producer here, into as few clothes as possible – wet ones if absolutely necessary. Sweeney’s producer credit is strange considering she’s spent the better part of her short career so far fending off misogynistic questions about her onscreen (!) sexuality and her boobs.
Gluck and co-writer Ilana Wolpert – whose credits include Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, so say no more – loosely based the screenplay on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (hahaha), replacing Benedick and Beatrice with Ben (Powell) and Bea (Sweeney) and lightly gender swapping the anti-marriage one. It’s all forehead-slappingly dumb (why can people just not try adulting in these movies?), farther from Gluck’s other spin on English Lit 101 classics, Easy A, and closer to the inanity of Friends with Benefits. There are zero surprises here, and if that’s your jam, grab the popcorn.
I hate it when this happens
After a coffee shop meet cute that tells us nothing about how either one pays for their chic central Boston apartments but gets her a clutzy trip to the toilet – it’s always clutzy – they spend a magical day together (I guess they blow off work, because who needs to work?), have a grilled cheese and fall asleep. It’s platonic and perfect and so Bea sneaks out in the morning. He’s crushed, but when his best mate Pete (rapper-actor GaTa) calls him out for being smitten, he very manfully brushes the night, and Bea, off. But look! She overheard him. Oh no! They run into each other again in a bar with mutual friends and fiancées Claudia (Alexandra Shipp) and Halle (Hadley Robinson), and next thing you know they have to spend a weekend in Sydney for a destination wedding. For the record, Boston to Sydney for the weekend is about the whitest thing ever. Let the merry war betwixt the two commence.
The war of course involves Ben and Bea “pretending” to be a couple so Bea can ditch the guy she jilted before her own wedding, Jonathan (Darren Barnett), and Ben can re-woo the “one that got away”, Margaret (Charlee Fraser). This is stupid. Helping out with the whole let’s-fake-a-conversation-to-trick-them-into-digging-each-other are Claudia’s folks, Carol and Leo (Michelle Hurd and Dermot Mulroney), and Halle’s, Innie and Roger (Rachel Griffiths and Bryan Brown).
In grand rom-com fashion the shenanigans somehow include Bea crawling over Ben in his business class pod, stripping off for fear of giant Aussie bugs down swimsuits, setting a flower arrangement on fire, fucking up the wedding cake and falling into Sydney Harbour (natch). Gluck and Wolpert never miss a beat, never miss a preordained “misunderstanding”, never miss a sprint. There’s no doubt Bea and Ben will get together. It’s familiar and sunny and aspirational – and entirely gag-inducing.
As bloody stupid as Anyone But You is, it isn’t entirely without its moments – and this is the great trick of the rom-com. They all have their moments. Here many of them involve Margaret’s lunkheaded surfer beauhunk, erm, Beau (discount Chris Hemsworth Joe Davidson) who speaks purely in rapid fire Australianisms and has zero compunctions about nudity, and GaTa delivering the common sense the rest of the characters lack. The vets (Hurd, Brown) are effortless, and Powell and Sweeney do have a nice dynamic that takes some of the stink off the bullshit. Anyone But You is at least honest. What you think you see is precisely what you get. But be warned: That cloying “Unwritten” at the end will stick with you – and it’s no “Murder on the Dancefloor”. — DEK