“Every new high-profile rom-com ends up, perhaps unfairly, being expected to redefine the genre or to usher it into the 2020s. What makes Anyone But You especially significant to this conversation is its old-school-style pairing of two of Hollywood’s most popular and attractive young stars, its relatively large budget given this day and age ($25 million), and its being made expressly for theatrical release as opposed to the hundreds of cheap rom-coms produced each year by Netflix or Amazon Prime.”
I am not at all averse to a rom-com – not even the modern ones. I enjoyed Set It Up (2018). I loved Plus One (2019). So when I heard about Anyone But You being lauded for giving “new life to the genre” (IndieWire), garnering an audience score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes (in spite of its 54% critics’ equivalent), and gaining notoriety as something “the youths really like” (The Atlantic), I was looking forward to welcoming another film to the beloved canon. But if this is indeed what “the youths” like, I feel like Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock.
Every new high-profile rom-com ends up, perhaps unfairly, being expected to redefine the genre or to usher it into the 2020s. What makes Anyone But You especially significant to this conversation is its old-school-style pairing of two of Hollywood’s most popular and attractive young stars, its relatively large budget given this day and age ($25 million), and its being made expressly for theatrical release as opposed to the hundreds of cheap rom-coms produced each year by Netflix or Amazon Prime. In the age of streaming, the rom-com has been relegated to a product destined for such services, being denied the risk of a theatrical release and having its budget adjusted accordingly. The US box-office receipts for Anyone But You’s opening weekend, standing at a mere $6.3 million, seemed to confirm the reality of the new status quo. Yet the film took in more on the second week ($8.7 million), and even more on the third ($9.7 million) – turning into a sleeper hit that ended up making more than ten times its first weekend. Does this make it the harbinger of a long-awaited rom-com renaissance? After seeing it myself, I wouldn’t be so quick to say yes.
“The only comedy forthcoming from Anyone But You was from how its extreme clichéness allowed you to predict exactly what someone was going to say, or from how unintentionally stupid some of the dialogue was.”
During the trailers preceding the film, many of us in the theatre laughed at Dakota Johnson’s meme of a line “he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died” from Madame Web (2024). I may not have been so carefree had I known what utter buffoonery of a script I would be subjected to for the hundred minutes straight that followed. Nearly every second line of dialogue was a sentence you’ve heard in a different movie before. Cliché is of course to be expected in the romantic-comedy genre, but this was just relentless. Barely five minutes in we have to hear Ben (Glen Powell) talk to Bea (Sydney Sweeney) about his dead mom and the only morals she imparted to him, before being swatted two minutes later with the explicit reminder from one of the side characters that Ben never tells anyone about his mom. Two characters make reference to “this crazy journey we call life” – and only one of them did it ironically.
More than anything else, I found the film so unfunny. And really, really cringey. I don’t mind a bit of second-hand embarrassment, but it needs to be followed by comedy to soften the blow. The only comedy forthcoming from Anyone But You was from how its extreme clichéness allowed you to predict exactly what someone was going to say, or from how unintentionally stupid some of the dialogue was (“Look at us. Just a couple of fucked-up people floating in the middle of the harbour”). The film was full of half-hearted attempts at deepness while every character, from the token black best friend to Australian Gal Gadot, lacked depth of any kind. Goldman Sachs employee and finance bro Ben and spiritual, spacey Pete are the unlikeliest of friends – and that’s all we’ll ever find out about that. Why? Because it’s (not) in the script. Ben’s presence at this very small wedding doesn’t make much sense; he’s the only non-relative invited to join this party of ten (at first, anyway) and he doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of them at all.
“The best I can say of Sweeney in this film: great gowns, beautiful gowns. Not a single line she utters feels sincere. Powell is better at selling this kind of thing, just unfortunately not enough for me to want to purchase.”
Looking past the weak script, the two main characters in this film are absolute ASSHOLES. The premise is that due to a misunderstanding between them after spending a nice romantic evening together, they are now mortal enemies who are horrified to re-encounter one another after Bea’s sibling and Ben’s close friend start dating. They are invited to the wedding of this pair in Sydney, and seemingly think nothing of making the whole event about themselves. Despite the original misunderstanding being so small it could be straightened out after a civil two-minute conversation, neither of them can put their pettiness aside for the sake of their loved ones for even a second. Their constant bickering sets a firework off which destroys an expensive-looking floral arrangement, and on another occasion knocks over and ruins the wedding cake. When they’re not busy openly arguing with each other but instead pretending to be dating in order to appease some of the other wedding guests, they make such a show of their togetherness and obnoxiously take over moments that might otherwise be sweet. They skip the champagne toast at the rehearsal dinner so they can recreate that Titanic scene for everyone else to watch, and end up getting the coast guard called on them. They behave so selfishly it is insane; I was not rooting for them at all. After being asked AGAIN to stop acting out and behave for ONE day, just the day of the wedding, Bea sulks in the corner of the reception before essentially being asked to leave by her sister so she can have her main-character moment elsewhere.
In every single situation, from the engagement party to the wedding itself, Bea seemed to enter it thinking: “How do I make this about me”. So she’s having a quarter-life crisis and has recently withdrawn from college. Many a rom-com heroine is going through it when we meet them at the start of their film, but that doesn’t give them licence to be a self-centred asshole. Usually, their supposed faults or quirks are supposed to endear them to us and make them somewhat relatable. But there was barely anything about Bea, or the film in general, that was relatable. The whole affair was so violently upper-class: the vast estate right by the beautiful Australian coast boasting a tennis court and a pool, the personal fireworks, the champagne reception on a yacht, the not-so-subtle Miu Miu handbag. Even the Lululemon product placement was pissing me off. I know that pointing out crude displays of wealth is not a legitimate criticism of a movie, but these only served to further alienate me from a character I was already not feeling the most sympathetic towards.
“I wonder if this is why Anyone But You’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is so alarmingly high. Has BookTok programmed the general public into believing that media which ticks certain boxes for tropes equates to media which is well made?”
The best I can say of Sweeney in this film: great gowns, beautiful gowns. Not a single line she utters feels sincere. Powell is better at selling this kind of thing, just unfortunately not enough for me to want to purchase. After an initial trailer so bad that it went viral for its lacklustre line delivery and failure to explain why the characters had to pretend to be together, the cheating rumours surrounding the production were really all that they had going for them. But judging by the box-office figures (currently at $200 million), these did the trick. Of the “undeniable” chemistry between the two leads, I am not that convinced. I thought that Powell and his 2018 Set It Up co-star Zoey Deutch made a more compelling duo. The promo clips released of Sweeney and Powell felt awkward and stiff, so much so that they invited a spoof by The Curse’s Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone. Regardless, Powell and Sweeney have revealed that they are looking for a new movie to do together, aspiring to that kind of signature Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan partnership so emblematic of nineties rom-coms.
Why did Anyone But You evoke in me such a negative reaction? One possible reason is that it felt far too much like a BookTok adaptation (derogatory). I don’t mean a simple book-to-movie adaptation along the lines of the comparatively respectable To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018). Watching the cringefest that was Anyone But You unfold, I was getting flashbacks to all those books I had started, whose online reviews were favourable and whose premises seemed halfway decent, before discovering firsthand how spectacularly awful the writing was and tossing them aside as soon as I reached the sixty-page-mark. I hate not finishing a book, and I used to always force myself to brave through even the worst duds, but that was before I started looking to that aforementioned section of TikTok for book recommendations. Don’t get me wrong, I have found many a great read from the platform – but the books that tend to be the most popular there, those that occupy the shelves marked “BookTok” in bookshops, rely heavily on “tropes” and much less on good writing. At risk of sounding too “old-man-yells-at-cloud”, I wonder if this is why Anyone But You’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is so alarmingly high. Has BookTok programmed the general public into believing that media which ticks certain boxes for tropes equates to media which is well made?
Halfway through Anyone But You, I found myself staring stone-faced at the back of the seat in front of me, regretting every decision that led me to that moment. My only consolation was that at least the ticket only cost €5 – a win in this economy, yet it still felt like a loss for my dignity. To my surprise (and slight horror), Anyone But You is still eking out its theatrical release in some Irish cinemas, ten weeks after its release. The people have spoken, and they want rom-coms back in theatres.
I am all for such a renaissance. But we need to have some standards. We cannot be too ready to praise bland mediocrity, or in the case of Anyone But You, pure trash. I hate streaming services and how they have bullied their way into transforming film production, distribution and consumption. We do need a revival of the mid-budget rom-com that is not made expressly for streaming. And the commercial success of Anyone But You should signal to the studios as much, which is good; the film has made so much of a profit that it could be used by Sony to cover the loss of Madame Web’s flop – which is the opposite of how superhero movies typically work (sorry to keep mentioning Madame Web, it’s not intentional – but I suppose her web truly does connect them all…). However, I just hope that this success ushers in better writers who can live up to the good rom-coms of yore, and not ones who see such films as exercises in trope-ticking.
WORDS: Rosie O’Mara
