Anyone But You [2023]

Welcome back to My Year of Shakespeare, we're at the tail end of Much Ado About April with the Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney romcom Anyone But You, ostensibly based on Much Ado About Nothing. I didn't have a great time with this, but it also was no McLintock in terms of unwatchability.

A Brief Summary

Hey we're doing these again? Neat. Although doesn't that mean it didn't really follow the beats of the play? Uh oh!

Bea (Sweeney) is a law student who connects with finance bro Ben (Powell); they have a meetcute at a coffee shop and spend the day (and night) together. Bea leaves in the morning and Ben, seemingly without object permanence, assumes she ghosted him; as she walks back to reconnect, she overhears him disparaging her.

Months later, they icily cross paths again when Bea's sister is dating Ben's sister, and end up on the same flight to their sisters' destination wedding in Australia. Bea has dropped out of law school and is kind of a mess. Ben's ex is there, and in an effort to make her jealous, Bea suggests they pretend to be together. It works until, while re-enacting the "I'm king of the world" scene from Titanic, Bea falls overboard and Ben dives in after her. They get airlifted and end up sleeping together.

The morning of the wedding, Bea sees Margaret kiss Ben, and leaves in tears, having caught feelings. However Ben doesn't share those feelings and decides to make a grand gesture to get back with Bea — jumping off the cliff the wedding is taking place on, into the ocean, and via airlift, reconnects with Bea.

I'm omitting some things with this - there is a conspiracy to get them to like eachother, and also Bea's ex is flown in by her overbearing parents - but they truly Don't Matter.

Is It Good?

Man I don't know. Like McClintock!, The Hottie and the Nottie, and China Girl, it is an "inspired by" adaptation, not a more-direct one with a minor setting change. This one tosses many of the plotlines from its source material — Dogberry? Hell no. Hero? Claudio? That is so drastically altered as to be unrecognizable. Don John? The only villain here is the two protagonists getting in their own way. — and subs in conventions from turn-your-brain-off romcoms to get it to a somehow-still-bloated-feeling 103 minutes. Like I complained about in China Girl, the language of the original is completely omitted. It's so stripped down that it feels like maybe it should just jettison the 'inspired by' altogether.

Am I disappointed that it didn't follow the play that I haven't enjoyed throughout this month beat-for-beat? I guess. Did it feel tired, like maybe this would've been played-out-but-good in 2006? Yes. Very much so. Especially the Natasha Bedingfield "the whole cast sings along to it, badly" end credits. Ultimately I don't think Sweeney is a sufficiently charismatic actress to helm something like this, and Powell should be the king of supporting character actors, like Philip Seymour Hoffman with a 6-pack, who keeps getting shoved into the lead role. The wealth on display to make the plot work had me thinking about The White Lotus (which Sweeney was in! and was also terrible in!) and how the same movie from like, a working class point of view would be seen as a shot across the bow in the class war.

Worth your time? Maybe if you have a podcast about romcoms. It's sort of a disappointing entry in the director of Easy A's filmography, although that could be said about the rest of Will Gluck's filmography. His upcoming picture, One Night Only, sounds promising, like The Purge but a romcom.

Only one stray note with this one, which is Dermot Mulroney and Michael Imperioli have somehow aged into the same visage and I kept doing double takes at Mulroney, excited that Christopher Sopranos* had shown up.

* Yes I know that isn't his name. Thank you for your attentive reading.