Earlier this year, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s on-set and red carpet flirtations sparked rumors of the duo being involved in an actual relationship. The extensive are-they-or-aren’t-they press coverage has felt suspiciously like PR engineering geared toward setting audiences up for Will Gluck’s rom-com Anyone But You. This seemingly manufactured narrative of on-screen chemistry spilling over into real life, though, dovetails interestingly with the plot of the film, which finds Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) toeing a similarly ambiguous line as they pretend to be in a relationship while at the wedding in Australia between the former’s sister, Halle (Hadley Robinson), and the latter’s friend, Claudia (Alexandra Shipp).
Bea and Ben’s history began before the wedding, when a flirty coffeeshop encounter led to a romantic, yet sex-free, late-night talking session at Ben’s home only for Bea to sneak out early the next morning. In true rom-com fashion, she realizes her mistake and just as she returns and is about to knock on his door, she hears the ego-wounded Ben complaining to his roomie, Pete (Gata), about how he couldn’t wait for her to leave. Their disdain for one another, stemming from their misperception of one another’s motives that morning, doesn’t stop them from forming a convenient alliance that helps Bea keep her parent-approved ex-fiancé, Jonathan (Darren Barnet), at bay, while making Ben appear more desirable to his own ex, Margaret (Charlee Fraser), whom he’s trying to woo back from her Aussie fuckboi, Beau (Joe Davidson).
As Bea and Ben take on the roles of perceived lovers, the film uses the dubiousness of their attraction as a springboard for exploring how their desires and insecurities spur on vacillations between developing feelings for each other and retreating whenever the other shows that they may only be play-acting. It’s an intriguing use of a tried-and-true rom-com cliché to expose both characters’ inner flaws, and the passion that Sweeney and Powell exude injects a playfulness into the proceedings that adds tension to the twists and turns that their relationship takes.
Anyone But You, though, has next to nothing to offer when anyone but Sweeney or Powell are on screen together. This is ostensibly an ensemble film, yet the supporting players remain painfully one-dimensional and rarely behave even remotely like human beings. Each of them remains so stoutly single-minded in their concern over whether or not the duo are fighting or fucking that you begin to wonder if anyone even remembers that the vacation is actually about.
Incredulity is often grist for the rom-com mill, but films in the genre typically thrive only when secondary characters are given something to chew on and the world in which the romance takes place is fleshed out beyond a basic sketch. Anyone But You flounders on both counts, coasting on Powell and Sweeney’s chemistry without bothering to create a compelling film around them.
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