Some Ado About Something

Anyone But You is an air-light meringue of a romantic comedy or an eye-rolling miss, depending on your feelings about the genre. I’m in the former camp. Besides, there aren’t enough of these, and we need to encourage the studios. More wacky amorous miscommunications, fewer astronomical body counts, please!

First off, it’s nice to see Sydney Sweeney smile. I’ve never subjected myself to Euphoria, but I found her uniquely terrifying in the first White Lotus season. She can deploy a mean girl, who-farted expression that puts Regina George to shame.

So it surprised me to find her pull off rom-com hijinks in this riff on Much Ado About Nothing, in which she plays opposite the handsome, if oddly small-faced, Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick). Sweeney is Bea, a law student who meets-cute with Powell’s Ben at a coffee shop. They end up spending the night together – just talking, the movie takes pains to point out – and she flees early the next morning, leading to a misunderstanding that’s a cliche now but it’s Shakespeare so let’s just go with it.

ANYONE BUT YOU ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Will Gluck
Written by: Ilana Wolpert, Will Gluck
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp
Running time: 103 mins

Cut to a wedding in Australia: Turns out Bea’s sister Halle (Hadley Robinson) is marrying Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), sister of Ben’s best friend Pete (GaTa, this movie’s goofy secret weapon). The now-nemeses must endure together at a destination wedding at a stunning beachside mansion, where Halle and Bea’s controlling parents are a very blonde Rachel Griffiths and Dermont Mulroney, who’s really in his hot, befuddled dad-role prime, while Claudia’s parents are Michelle Hurd and Bryan Brown. Also Bea and Ben’s respective exes (Darren Barnet and Charlee Fraser) are there. Got that? The fam unites in trying to trick our two leads into getting back together, so they’ll stop ruining the wedding party. They decide to pretend they’re together to get everyone off their backs. But are they pretending a little too well? Only anyone who’s ever seen a rom-com will know!

Director Will Gluck (of the great Easy A) goes to the Channing Tatum playbook of having his leading man get naked as often as possible, and Powell is likably game, especially in a scene that involves Bea having to inspect his undercarriage for poisonous spiders. Jokes at his expense abound, from the repeated references to him as a fuckboy to, despite a magnificent set of abs, a complete inability to do cardio of any kind. Sweeney’s cleavage is just everywhere. I get that it’s summer in Australia, but the plunging necklines on these slip gowns cannot be comfortable for actual movement. Everyone’s beautiful, everyone’s got eyes for someone else, and it all just goes along toward the inevitable conclusion.

And you know what? It’s fun enough. The dialogue’s hardly Shakespeare (though Gluck does throw in an occasional line with a wink) but I’m here for the horny bickering, the low-stakes plot, the big friendly oaf of an Aussie (Joe Davidson) waving his peen around, and the familiar paces of what used to be a cinematic mainstay. The screwball moments don’t always dazzle but sometimes they’re pretty funny, like a bit on the long-haul flight in which Bea attempts to straddle a sleeping Ben to steal his first-class cookie.

You could do worse than Anyone But You, like, for example, every Hallmark movie currently marathoning. See it now, while it’s in theaters and everyone else is having distracting holiday gatherings. Me and the four other people in my cinema had a blast.