Anyone But You Has More Sex on Its Mind Than Your Average Rom-Com

This review was published on December 23, 2023. As of April 23, Anyone But You is streaming on Netflix.

Anyone But You has been billed as yet another attempt to revive the studio romantic comedy. But in trying to do so, it achieves something potentially more impressive: It almost brings back the studio sex comedy. If the rom-com was killed off by a combination of audience apathy, the decline of the modern star system, and the rise of online algorithmic matchmaking, the sex comedy was killed off by all these things plus the double-headed social hydra (and paradox) of ubiquitous internet porn and growing cultural puritanism about any and all matters erotic. Also, sex comedies were usually kind of stupid.

It would be silly to call Anyone But You smart, but it has a knowing quality that allows it to confidently navigate some of the more familiar aspects of the rom-com: the meet-cute, the growing adversarial relationship, the constant and farce-friendly pretending, the pop-song sing-alongs, the breathless (and well-telegraphed) climactic declaration of love in a special setting. It helps also that Will Gluck’s film is yet another (very loose) riff on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, the original romantic comedy featuring two adversaries set up by friends who pretend to whisper behind their backs about how much each loves the other.

In this case, the two lovers-to-be are charismatic finance guy Ben (Glen Powell) and klutzy Boston law student Bea (Sydney Sweeney), who meet when she desperately has to use a café bathroom but is unable to wait in line to purchase something first; he, being next in line, pretends to be her husband. As far as meet-cutes go, this is quite a dumb one, but here it’s rendered delightful through Powell’s confident smile and Sweeney’s charmed bafflement. Each actor has an innate self-awareness — a polished overconfidence on his part, a monotone detachment on hers — that allows them to glide through the pro forma nature of both this scene and the rest of the movie. It’s like they both know they’ve found themselves in the middle of a rom-com.

After a seemingly life-changing hookup, the nascent couple is torn apart through a rather silly misunderstanding, only to then be reunited a while later when Ben’s best friend’s sister, Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), becomes engaged to Bea’s sister Halle (Hadley Robinson), and the two former flings find themselves invited to an intimate wedding in Australia. I’d say wackiness ensues, but what really ensues is a lot of unclothing. Everybody at this wedding is hilariously, ridiculously hot, from the fathers-in-law, played by onetime hunks (and still genuine DILFs) Dermot Mulroney and Bryan Brown, to our heroes’ exes, played by Charlee Fraser and Darren Barnet, the latter of whom looks like the Chad ideal made real.

Of course, Ben and Bea are the most spectacularly gorgeous of them all; it’s hard to decide which one has the more ample chest. And if the classic rom-com found ways to put its protagonists in funny and cringeworthy situations (think Hugh Grant being forced to pose as a reporter for Horse & Hound in Notting Hill, or Sandra Bullock having explosive diarrhea in Two Weeks Notice), Anyone But You does so in ways designed to compound its characters’ hotness. A hiking trip in which Ben finds a giant spider in his shorts leads to him frantically shedding all his clothes and then making Bea check him out to make sure there aren’t any creepy-crawlies hiding in his body. Yes, it makes him look ridiculous, but when you look as ridiculously good as Glen Powell does, a scene like this is basically just another flex. And let’s be clear — he absolutely is flexing.

This self-aware attitude serves the movie well as it hits its required genre plot points. Even the story is based on a kind of self-awareness. Bea and Ben’s friends are so transparent in their efforts to convince each that the other is secretly in love that the pair begin pretending to fall for each other just to get everyone to shut up. They have other motives, too: If it looks like Bea is attached, then her ex Jonathan (Barnet) might stop pursuing her. If it looks like Ben is attached, then his onetime fling Margaret (Fraser) might start pursuing him. No, I’m not sure how any of that makes sense either — but it’s not supposed to. In a sex comedy, any dumb ruse that serves to get our heroes together is welcome.

So, even when these characters are supposed to seem the most vulnerable, the most embarrassed, they look almost comically amazing. That should be a flaw, but it’s not, because the cast is clearly in on it, and besides, this is a movie where everybody seems eager to jump each other’s bones. That is perhaps the most refreshing thing about Anyone But You: Everybody gets to be horny. It seems like a miracle that a movie like this is even allowed to exist in this day and age.

Bilge Ebiri , 2024-04-23 18:00:00

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