Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp, Hadley Robinson, Rachel Griffiths, Dermot Mulroney, Michelle Hurd, Bryan Brown, Gata, Darren Barnet
Intro:
… there is more to do with love than hate in Anyone but You, and definitely more for audiences to enjoy than dislike.
“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love” says Romeo in William Shakespeare’s most famous romance. These words, which flash against a brick wall early in Will Gluck’s rom-com, Anyone but You, nicely encapsulate the film. Inspired by another of Shakespeare’s plays, the comedy Much Ado About Nothing, Anyone but You presents a classic tale of enemies turned to lovers.
The movie follows Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) (named after the protagonists of Much Ado), who meet in a coffee shop and over the course of one night, fall headfirst in love. However, one misunderstanding snowballs into another and by the next morning, the pair are convinced of their mutual hatred. As fate would have it, they meet again one year later at Bea’s sister’s destination wedding in Sydney, Australia. There, the angry couple decide to feign romance in order to appease their friends and make their exes jealous but, of course, the fakery quickly turns real.
As in a Shakespearian comedy, the narrative hurtles towards a wedding (but not one uniting the chief protagonists), and it is filled with miscommunications, performances within performances and elaborate matchmaking plots. Early on, Bea and her ex-fiancée (Darren Barnet) play outdoor chess with oversized pieces, Gluck (quite heavy-handedly) reminding viewers that every character is merely a pawn in a larger game of manipulation.
While the script sounds somewhat like a first draft and the central plot is well-worn, there is much to be enjoyed in Gluck’s latest comedy. It is a pleasure to watch Sweeney and Powell frolic around on the sundrenched beaches of Sydney, and Bryan Brown gives an endearing performance as father of one of the brides. Sydney (the city) makes for a gorgeous backdrop, the landscape glimmering in shades of verdant green, blue and gold, and many a funny joke is made about the strength of Australian coffee. For those looking for a dose of cinematic romance, there are plenty of grand displays of love, even if several are predicated on the erroneous belief that a helicopter comes to the rescue every time one jumps into a large body of water.
Though a film about star-crossed American lovers in modern day Australia navigating a narrative concocted by a seventeenth century English playwright might feel clumsy with a different cast, Sweeney and Powell’s palpable chemistry holds it all together. When the pair argue about how best to convey their (fake) love on a hike, furiously rubbing each other’s bums whilst looking out over a vista, their sparky, spiky affection for one another charmingly shines through. Certainly, there is more to do with love than hate in Anyone but You, and definitely more for audiences to enjoy than dislike.
