Anyone But You
SONY
Anyone but You is becoming more and more successful with each moment it graces the silver screen, and it isn't hard to see why. While some would argue that the romantic comedy has been dead for several years at this point – and for good reason, with films such as The Five Year Engagement and Bros coming up short at the box office. Two films, while in the same genre, that shot for different sectors of the same audience and came up short, quality notwithstanding. Those are just a couple of examples from the ultimately fledgling genre.
What makes Anyone but You stand out above the pack, in some pretty obvious ways, is the star power at the helm. Carrying a modest production budget of 25 million dollars the film stars Sydney Sweeney at the height of her popularity after Euphoria, and Glen Powell after the monumental success of Top Gun: Maverick. While, unfortunately, Sweeney leaves a bit to be desired from her performance and Powell plays a very similar archetype to what audiences have seen him do these past few years, there's an undeniable physical chemistry between the two leads. This helps with the believability of the romance tremendously.
Where this whole project begins to feel very stale is in the scripting department. Now, the direction absolutely does nothing to reinvent the wheel, Will Gluck isn't trying to and doesn't need to, but the dialogue can fall into the realm of unfathomably bad, with these two going at each other's throats over an issue that could be resolved with a simple pause to think. Anyone but You lacks any real idea of how to create conflict that the audience should actually give a shit about. These characters don't matter, the story doesn't matter, and everyone here knows that. The studio was able to bring in just the right amount of talent to make this a somewhat half decent romantic comedy, but that all lies on the shoulders of our leads, and the stunning backdrop of Sydney, Australia.
The success of this film is realistically more important than anything that actually happens on the screen. By carrying a modest budget and going the extra mile of bringing in 3x the cash Anyone but You is nothing but proof of the appeal of going to see something in the cinemas that doesn't involve a caped crusader taking down a mob boss or the untimely destruction of Earth. The appeal of cinema is to take your mind and bring it somewhere new, to appeal towards a certain section of your brain and make you feel something. For a lot of people, Anyone but You will scratch that itch.
Ultimately, there's absolutely an appetite for this type of film and general audiences could certainly do worse with at least a dozen high profile romantic comedies hitting the big, and small, screen from No Hard Feelings all the way to Hulu’s Rye Lane. All of these whisking through with varying degrees of quality, but for better or worse, Anyone but You is having the most traction by far. The beautiful locations, and beautiful people, certainly make this a more appealing big screen delight, but it is certainly a shame that the film is a clichéd mess in every other respect.