Anyone But You

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Anyone But You is a romantic comedy following Bea and Ben; who both have an incredibly romantic hookup early in the film and after handling it poorly turn to hating one another. Unfortunately due to connections of family and friends they are forced together at a destination wedding in Sydney. Wanting peace from the young bachelor being forced on her and proposing to Ben that he could make his crush jealous, Bea instigates a fake relationship to help the antagonistic pair.

 

This film does a great job with the central story of Bea and Ben, a couple of young hapless individuals who work for one another but haven't come together well. Their first meeting together is classically cute and seeing them steadily develop feelings for one another is extremely endearing. But as they fumble and lose that connection you become a bit forlorn that it doesn't turn to more too; you hurt like the characters which is a nice starting place to be. The whole hating one another, biting banter and ensuing fake relationship is all fuel to a fire we want to see burn; because deep down we're the audience that watched the opening sequence and we know the chemistry and potential is there. The moments of watching these two genuinely fall in love with one another are lovely, instances like the helicoptor scene or Ben teaching Bea's Dad to dive.

 

This movie really takes full advantage of the stunning Sydney set pieces and locations it is privvy to and captures them beautifully. I also found the score had this hazy quality to it that made the whole 'will they/won't they' quality even better. The soundtrack was insane and a perfect collection of pieces for this modern romcom; though 'Unwritten' by Natasha Bedingfield was particularly iconic.

 

Sydney Sweeney, who played Bea, might not have found her best role here but she pairs incredibly nicely with Powell; Sweeney does the moments where her character stands up for herself and plays off against others really adeptly. GaTa, who played Pete, is quite an odd best friend role but he winds up being delightfully charming; the way GaTa delivers some of those lines results in some surprisingly hilarious scenes. Joe Davidson, who played Beau, is absolutely hysterical as the most over the top Australian Adonis I have ever seen; his delivery on quickfire Australian slang is side-splitting stuff and he may have been the funniest role in the feature for me.Bryan Brown, who played Roger, is another comedic performance that works surprisingly well; when Brown and GaTa are paired together you get a very surprising comedy duo that works terrifically.

 

However, the best performance came from Glen Powell, who played Ben. This man was entirely perfect for the lead of this hot and steamy rom-com, he was ceaselessly charismatic while not above playing up a bit of embarrassment in a few scenes. I was really impressed with the chemistry kindled between him and Sweeney; they clicked almost immediately and could play attraction to conflict with one another very well. Powell was quite good at playing to the comedy of a scene in a genuine way, he fully embraced the joke and made those moments his own. I also really loved those quieter moments in which we see how much Powell's role genuinely feels something for Bea and stumbles around being truthful with those emotions. Also Glen Powell singing 'Unwritten' stark naked with Joe Davidson is everything I needed from my last reviewed film of 2023.

 

This film was filled with a lot of explaining about family history, relationships and dynamics that bogged down and laboured the storytelling at times. This was also a feature that really did set-up in quite an obvious sort of way, everything was spelled out for you and quite obvious. Even the subtext of the whole thing being a loose adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing was spelt out for us in big bold lights at the end. The film really could have served to be a little bit more subtle and show some faith in the audience. There also wasn't much importance placed on the characters of Margaret and Jonathan despite their roles being such a motivating factor of the whole 'fake dating' scenario. I also found a lot of the dialogue to be a bit over the top and cheesy, which really served some scenes and made others a bit too goofy.

 

The editing never really felt quite on pace, some scenes were cut together strangely while others moved outright too slow. 

Alexandra Shipp and Hadley Robinson, who played Claudia and Halle respectively, are the happy couple in the background of the film and they feel a bit boring together; I would have been a lot more invested in this pair if they had actually shown any chemistry with one another. Dermot Mulroney and Rachel Griffiths, who played Leo and Innie respectively, are more than a little generic as the overbearing parents; Mulroney attempting to be the old romantic doesn't really come off in his scenes depicting this. Charlee Fraser, who played Margaret, is a role that allegedly has history with Powell's but it rarely feels that way; the lack of spark between these two undermines their subplot with one another constantly. Michelle Hurd, who played Carol, is the one parent figure the film really doesn't know what to do with; Hurd tends to fall into the background and gets underused a lot of the time. Darren Barnet, who played Jonathan, seems a bit lost in this one; he really struggles to connect with Sweeney on any level to make their backstory compelling.

A romcom that keeps it simple and is lead by a couple of leads with tremendous chemistry. I would give Anyone But You a 6.5/10.