I would like if I may to reprint my concluding words from my review of 2022’s Ticket to Paradise; “it’s just not the sort of film we get anymore and is it fair that I’m giving this film a lot more credit for just doing something that I wished studios did a lot more often? Perhaps. But beyond that this film really is a perfect example of how stars can elevate the average film, something that I can’t think of the last example we got. A film where the draw is purely the two lead stars. Now do I wish the film wasn’t just these two and that the rest of the film could bare its own and actually be good? Of course I do, let’s not be ridiculous here, but it is a shining light in some ways and for that I feel happy to have watched it in the cinema, not on a bloody streamer, and with family and friends. Is it any good? No, not really. Will cinema-goers get behind it? I hope so. This is the first time I am wholly recommending a 5/10 film”. I reprint this of course for the very explicit reason that although I do feel the much awaited rom-com Anyone But You is another 5/10 for me, it is better I feel and yet still something huge is missing in the quality of these products!
After that truly disastrous first trailer I thought we were done for and although the one minute clip of Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone recreating the cringey promo the two stars of this film released is a million times funnier to me than anything in this film, the eventual film we received is a pretty fun standard romance. Note, I didn’t say rom-com. At a certain point although jokes are attempted my entire cinema went silent for the rest of the film. Now this was at an early point in the film and this was a very busy cinema and I came to the realisation that the film was vastly prioritising its romance over its comedy to such an extent that I would actually describe this as just a romance film instead of a rom-com. I mean I just didn’t laugh and I know that humour is subjective, but I just really did not find this film funny at all. Did I find it entertaining? Sure. The film has a solid set-up and its stars are the much talked about Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, who indeed are very charismatic and alluring of course. There is always going to be something to watching sexy people fall in love on screen and the chemistry is indeed there and effective, but this film just throws so many obstacles in its own way as it strides to be entertaining. The film is based upon a modernised version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, despite the fact that to be frank all rom-coms are based on a modernised version of Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedict set-up of two people who hate each other falling in love. But the film gets so messy in what it takes and doesn’t take and what it adapts and modernises that I have no idea what the point of using the original text was in the first place, especially with the amount of cringey and forced ways the film notes the play – with graffiti and superimposed quotes that offer nothing aswell as a series of painfully unfunny joke references in the actual dialogue. An initial stringency to the original plot followed by a series of modernisations leads to a confusing and convoluted plot that gets in the way of where the romance should be going.
Performance
wise as enjoyable as those on the outskirts of the main romance are, for
instance fun and very likable turns from the likes of Alexandra Shipp, Dermot
Mulroney, Michelle Hurd, Rachel Griffiths, even the wonderful Bryan Brown of Cocktail
fame, the film is of course built around and boasts the very charismatic
talents of Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Now, I can’t say that these two
performances completely work. Whereas Powell manages to pull off with
incredible ease the great charm of his Ben and his distain for Bea time to
time, and whereas Sweeney is likable and similarly charismatic, Powell pulls
off the comedy in a way that Sweeney certainly does not for the most part and
Sweeney manages to imbue her narrative emotionality better than the hamstrung
forced past lover plot that Powell has to contend with. When they are together
however the chemistry is palpable for me anyway and makes for an entertaining
night at the cinema but overall Anyone But You is simultaneously too
thin in many regards and yet far too convoluted throughout.
A fine 5/10 as sexy people in beautiful places with chemistry will always be entertaining in some regard, and as much as Gluck, Sweeney and Powell elevate to a certain regard, there is a real overall missed equation here that leads to a rom-com that isn’t that funny at all and is mostly ineffective and boilerplate. A peppering of enjoyable supporting performances adds somewhat, but another joke draft of the script for certain and another overall pass at tightening the needlessly convoluted scheming and we could have had something here. Currently no, we do not have the great rom-com savour that we were promised. I wish the many comedy films that made this year so enjoyable had the great box office success that this film had instead.
P.S. The Much Ado thing actually for me gets quite funny when Sydney Sweeney’s email is literally BeatriceMessina@hotmail...etc. and we’re supposed to believe that? Ben and Bea sure, I can take. I can even take Claudia instead of Claudio, but I don’t exactly think Messina is a common surname in modern day Chicago or wherever.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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