‘Anyone But You’ Review: Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in Bad Shakespeare Fanfiction

With the holidays fast approaching, and most people already sick and tired of the cold and chills that come with it, the idea of spending the holidays in a warmer, sunnier climate seems like a great idea — especially if it means finding some romance along the way. That’s Sony Pictures’ perspective, at least, with their latest rom-com: Anyone But You, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that sticks Beatrice (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) in modern-day Australia, as two people with bitter hang-ups after a one night stand that are forced to fake a relationship to ensure that their loved ones’ wedding goes smoothly. Naturally, of course, the fake love slowly gives way to the real thing, and they find themselves caught in a sticky situationship when their former flames come to call and their families are breathing down their necks.

I’ve been waiting for Powell to do another rom-com since 2018, particularly since he proved his leading man chops with last year’s Top Gun: Maverick. He exudes the same sticky-sweet charm here, as much a natural as any romantic lead that ever hit the big screen. He’s got the same charm as Hugh Grant in Notting Hill or his co-star Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friend’s Wedding, and it’s difficult (if not impossible) not to fawn over him even when he’s sparring with Sweeney. He seems to understand exactly the kind of himbo energy required of a man playing Benedick, or a version of him — he’s not awful, just awfully stupid, and Powell exudes that in spades, especially when he plays into those funnier aspects of the character.

Sydney Sweeney Is Phoning It in as Bea in ‘Anyone But You’

Unfortunately, he finds himself surrounded by actors who seem like they’ve been plucked right out of a high school popcorn reading of The Bard. The worst offender is Sweeney, who’s phoning things in so hard she may as well have Zoomed in from California instead of traveling all the way to Sydney. I’ve not seen Euphoria, but Anyone But You doesn’t give me much hope for her acting abilities — she seemed glassy-eyed in nearly every frame, her tone that of a teenager forced to read for Beatrice when she’d rather be doodling her crush’s name in her notebook. Nothing feels real coming out of her mouth, and Powell is working overtime to make up for the fact that she’s a hollow shell of a character, who doesn’t even sound convincing when excited for her sister’s wedding.

‘Anyone But You’ Makes a Mess of a Classic Story

The resulting lack of chemistry does little to help out a messy script, whose only resemblance to the original text is the quotes they sneak into the film, as though they have any understanding of the play at all. The inclusion is surface-level at best, given the way the plot diverts so strongly from the original concept, namely in Ben and Bea’s relationship with each other. The original play begins long after Benedick and Beatrice have made their acquaintance, and implies (in one of the many sequences co-writers Will Gluck and Ilana Wolpert seemingly chose to ignore) that they had a long history, one where they were deeply in love, and perhaps engaged to be married. “Indeed my lord,” Beatrice says, “he lent [his heart to me] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry once before he won it of me with false dice. Therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.”

Interpret that as you like, but I’ll be damned if a simple hook-up can engender that much love or the kind of circumstances that bear losing it in such a manner. It smacks more of a TikTok-style tropey set-up than an understanding of the text Wolpert and Gluck supposedly based their work on; they even wrote a separate longtime ex into Bea’s storyline, only to tick off the boxes of translating all the characters from the play to the screen.

Joss Whedon made the same mistake in his verbatim adaptation of Much Ado in 2011 — another version of the story that completely misunderstood the joy of Shakespeare’s original text. While fake dating is certainly an easy set-up, and one that requires little to no exposition when it comes to a cheap, fluffy rom-com, giving Bea and Ben little to no history means that none of the jokes land very well and that the animosity they share feels fake. It is put-upon at best, eliminating any potential at chemistry they might’ve had. Hell, there’s a set-up more true to the Bard’s original intent in a different rom-com of Powell’s: Set It Up, where he and Zoey Deutch spend months bickering before confessing their affection, not a cumulative hundred hours filled with badly written gags that made me cringe more than blush.

‘Anyone But You’s Script Feels Lazy and Underdeveloped

There’s a reason people have been adapting Shakespeare’s works practically as long as they’ve existed: no one is better at creating drama and suspense, intense emotion and heartbreak, even in something largely considered a comedy. For a standard romantic comedy, Anyone But You’s script is perfectly fine, a pile of tropes peppered with some of the strangest, most ineffective attempts at physical comedy I’ve ever seen. But to take one of the playwright’s funniest, most dramatic shows and strip it of practically all of its appeal feels wrong. Where’s the innuendos? Where’s the backstabbing? Where are the heart-wrenching monologues and declarations of love that don’t feel like they were written in somebody’s notes app when they realized they had pages due that morning?

None of it exists in Wolpert and Gluck’s script, replaced instead with a story that feels half-assed and insincere, held up only by the impressive chops of one particular actor, and the few co-stars who should’ve been given far more to do to make up for it. (How do you manage to waste Michelle Hurd?) And that’s to say nothing of the film’s supposed “hard R” rating, which really amounts to nothing more than a handful of f-bombs and one scene of Powell likely written entirely to show off his action hero-worthy physique, and doesn’t even do that well.

If Anyone But You can’t even commit fully to being a raunch-com — which might have saved it even if it failed on the Shakespeare front — I struggle to see how it’ll outlive its theatrical window, beyond being something for the Top Gun girlies to throw on when they’re drunk and don’t want to think. The whole thing smacks of wasted potential, a shoddy attempt at appealing to rom-com audiences that only serves to insult them instead, especially when other, better versions of the same story already exist.

My advice? Stick to the Kenneth Branagh version instead.

Anyone But You

REVIEW

Anyone But You is bad Shakespeare fanfiction with poor performances and a generally uninspired approach.

410

Pros

• Glen Powell has plenty of charm, proving once more that he’s a star.

Cons

• While not the only one doing so, Sydney Sweeney is phoning it in and giving very little to her character.
• The film is dragged down by both a messy script and a fundamental lack of chemistry between the leads.
• The attempts at physical comedy prove ineffective and the humor writ large falls far short of Shakespeare.

Anyone But You is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX