An *Actually* Honest Review Of ‘Anyone But You’
Romantic comedies fuelled almost all of my thoughts and feelings for nearly a decade.
I saw every interaction as a potential scene from a rom-com and I followed film formulas in the hope of bringing about a meet-cute moment. Of course, it never actually happened because I was 15 and was stuck at a boarding school locked away from anyone I fancied. But I still hung on to hope and watched every mushy movie I could to learn everything I could about love.
That journey brought me A Cinderella Story, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Notting Hill, 10 Things I Hate About You, Princess Diaries (one and two) and Bridget Jones. A smorgasbord of brilliant women figuring out how to fall in love, while deeply resisting the pull of a remarkably attractive bloke. A tried and tested – albeit often far too white and heteronormative – formula.
And it’s the formula that Anyone But You has followed to a tee.
It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers trope, that pinches a few plot points from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Actually, it steals a whole bunch from the play – even giving the lead characters the same name.
It opens with Bea and Ben meeting at a coffee shop, hitting it off and spending the night together. It’s an instant connection, they are besotted and they make cheese toasties. (That’s rom-com code for true love™.) Then the next morning Bea sneaks out and calls her bestie to debrief on meeting this “great guy” before realising she shouldn’t have left at all and heads back. It’s at that moment that she spots Ben chatting to his friend saying, “he couldn’t get her out of there fast enough” because she’s “a disaster”. And there we start the real story… one where Ben hates Bea for scurrying off and Bea hates Ben for slagging her off.
Of course, because we’re deep in the rom-com world, the two are brought together again because Ben’s best mate, Claudia, is marrying Bea’s sister Hallie. Oh and their wedding is in Australia, so the two must scoot off to the other side of the world and stay in a house together. And just to add insult to injury, both Bea’s ex-fiancé and Ben’s ex-girlfriend happen to be there too. Obviously.
The entire extended family are trying to get Bea and Ben to make up (and hook up) so they don’t accidentally ruin the wedding with their bad juju. Bea and Ben don’t want to do that but make an agreement with each other to ‘pretend’ to be a couple so their friends and family back off.
All the while they’re playing a couple, their chemistry is OFF CHOPS. I know there was a boatload of rumours about the lead actors, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, hooking up during filming and now I get why. These two look like they fancy the pants off each other. Sure, it’s probably just really good acting, but if I was either of their IRL partners, I’d be shitting bricks.
Of course, like any good enemies-to-lovers rom-com, I’m waiting the entire movie for the moment they realise they’re big-time in love with each other and suck face. The build-up of this tension is palpable. So much so, that for lots of the movie, the ensemble cast is horned up too and naked for the majority of their screen time. Props to Joe Robinson, who plays surfer-bro/Heath Ledger-lookalike for getting his whole penis out for a hilarious shower scene with Glen Powell.
I know that I’m spoiling absolutely nothing when I say that Bea and Ben end up together. It would be positively criminal if the movie went in any direction other than a happy ending, tied up with a large romantic gesture.
But that’s what we go into rom-coms seeking out, right? And that’s why Anyone But You is, in my opinion, brilliant. It follows the romantic comedy formula and shows the world in a simple, hyper-saturated form where it never rains and everyone’s hair is perfectly curled in every shot. There’s a family wedding, a solid ensemble cast who arrive to drop in a joke (or a penis) and then make themselves scarce so the on-screen chemistry of the leads can do its thing.
Does it change the world? No. Does it make you think profoundly about anything? Absolutely not. Does it sweep you off your feet and smooth your brain? SURE DOES.
Anyone But You will reignite that gooey fire that only rom-coms can do. It will make you believe that love maybe can make everything better. And it will, somehow, make you fancy Sydney Sweeney even more than you already did.
Image credit: Sony Pictures Australia + Punkee