PLOT: After a meet-cute at a coffee shop, high-flying finance whiz Ben (Glen Powell) and unhappy law student Bea (Sydney Sweeney) have a romantic misunderstanding that puts them at each other’s throats. When the two are forced to attend a destination wedding together, their feud threatens to derail the nuptials, leading their friends to plot a romantic trap that will have them fall back into each other’s arms…and beds.
REVIEW: Let me preface this by saying there’s nothing wrong with a good romantic comedy. It’s a genre that’s been dying in recent years, but when the formula is just right, you might manage a crowd-pleasing smash that will make many people happy. Yet, there’s an alchemy to the genre, and if the chemistry between the two leads is off, you wind up with a dud. Not everyone can be Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan (or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan), and indeed, Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney have zero chemistry together, making Anyone But You fall flat on its face right from the get-go.
If anything, this proves that you can’t just pair people in a movie like this because they’re both hot and assume sparks will fly. While the tabloids were buzzing about the two maybe hooking up off-camera, whatever chemistry they might have shared in real life does not translate to the screen, even if both are talented actors who’ve been great in other things. Sydney Sweeney is superb on Euphoria and recently stretched (quite well) in the underseen HBO movie Reality. For his part, Powell nails the rom-com vibe in his upcoming Richard Linklater movie, Hit Man.
So, right off the bat, Will Gluck’s retro rom-com has a big strike against it, as you never care (even for a second) whether these two might hook up. Part of the big problem here, admittedly, is Powell, who plays his role as too smarmy. There’s no sincerity to him, with even an early scene where he tells Sweeney about his mom falling flat, as you think he’s just trying to get her in bed. For her part, Sweeney seems too young (despite being in her mid-twenties) to be playing this formerly engaged law school dropout looking to reinvent herself. Co-star Alexandra Shipp, who’s stuck with a nothing role as Ben’s friend who’s getting married, might have been more convincing.
Gluck tries to cover up their lack of chemistry by having his leads show lots of skin, and indeed Sweeney looks dynamite in a bikini while Powell shows off the 8-pack at the drop of a hat. Aesthetically, they look great, as does the whole film with its gorgeous Sydney, Australia locations, but there’s no heart.
All that said, Gluck at least keeps the pace jaunty enough that you won’t find yourself too bored, with it having a fun supporting cast. I’ll admit that I got a kick out of Bryan Brown (star of F/X – a movie much beloved here on JoBlo) showing up as Alexandra Shipp’s beloved step-father who, along with his wife (Picard’s Michelle Hurd) tries to play Cupid for Ben and Bea. The other parents, played by Rachel Griffiths and Dermot Mulroney, fare less well, with Griffiths playing an incredibly insufferable meddler (although Mulroney seems to be having fun).
Ultimately, if you’re starved for a rom-com and want to see pretty people in pretty places, Anyone But You might suffice once it hits streaming. But, with a better script and a more evenly matched pair of leads, this could have been a decent entry into a genre that used to be a whole lot more common than it is now. Maybe the world needs a new Gerry Marshall to come along and show folks how a rom-com is done.