Anyone but You (2023)

Anyone but You is a 2023 romantic comedy film starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Based on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, the film was directed by Will Gluck, and written by Ilana Wolpert and Gluck. The supporting cast includes Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, Bryan Brown, and Rachel Griffiths.

Anyone but You premiered at the AMC Lincoln Square Theater on December 11, 2023, and was released theatrically in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing on December 22, 2023. The film received mixed reviews from critics and emerged as a sleeper hit, grossing $220 million worldwide. This success was seen as the return of romantic comedies to theaters.

Plot

Bea, a law student, meets bank employee Ben at a coffee shop. The two have an instant connection and spend the day together, ultimately falling asleep together on Ben's couch. Bea leaves without waking him in the morning but quickly reconsiders. When she returns to the apartment, she overhears Ben insulting her while talking to his friend Pete. Unaware that he is covering up that he was deeply hurt by her leaving without a word, Bea departs with the wrong idea.

Six months later, Bea and Ben cross paths again when Bea's sister Halle begins dating Pete's sister Claudia. Bea and Ben are frosty with each other, each blaming the other for their date ending poorly. Halle and Claudia eventually get engaged and plan their wedding in Sydney.

Some time later, Bea, who has recently broken up with her fiancé Jonathan and dropped out of law school, is dismayed to find that she and Ben are on the same flight to Sydney and that both will be staying at the house of Claudia and Pete's parents in the days leading up to the wedding. Their obvious disdain for each other upsets the other members of the wedding party, and the situation is then compounded by the appearances of both Bea's and Ben's exes, Jonathan and Margaret, respectively.

The attendees devise a plan to get Bea and Ben together to ensure the wedding goes smoothly. Bea sees through the scheme, but gets Ben to agree to pretend that they are back together, in order to both make Margaret jealous and stop Bea's parents pushing her to reconcile with Jonathan.

They attempt to sell their relationship with public displays of affection. During a party on a boat, Bea and Ben dance together, and then reenact a scene from Titanic, but it ends with Bea falling into Sydney Harbour. Ben jumps in after her and, while waiting for rescue on a buoy, she tells him that she has withdrawn from law school. They explain to each other what happened the morning after they met, and make a date to sightsee at the Sydney Opera House. After being rescued, the pair return to the house and end up having sex. After, Bea comments offhandedly that her recent actions have all been mistakes, which disappoints Ben. He leaves her while she is sleeping, disheartening Bea.

The morning of the wedding, Bea's parents learn that she has quit law school through Pete whom Ben had told, leaving her feeling betrayed. They tell the others that they were only pretending to be together. After overhearing Halle and Claudia arguing, Ben convinces Bea to pretend to reconcile for the sake of the wedding.

The ceremony goes smoothly, but Bea then sees Margaret kissing Ben, so leaves in tears, saying she needs some time alone. However, Ben rejects Margaret, declaring he no longer has feelings for her. The wedding guests convince Ben to chase after Bea, so, guessing where she has gone, he jumps off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean, asking the wedding party to contact harbor rescue, and then requests the helicopter which picks him up to fly him to the Opera House.

Once there, Ben finds Bea and tells her that he left because he feared their having sex could become another regret for her; Bea tells him that spending the night with him was the first thing she has not regretted in a long time. They reconcile and return to the reception as a couple, where Halle and Claudia reveal that their argument was a ruse to push them together.

During the end credits, Jonathan and Margaret are shown getting together.

Cast

Production

Development and casting

It was announced in January 2023 that Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell would star in the then-untitled film to be directed by Will Gluck. Alexandra Shipp, Michelle Hurd, Bryan Brown, Darren Barnet, and Hadley Robinson joined the cast in February, with the additions of Dermot Mulroney, Rachel Griffiths, and GaTa announced the following month. In October 2024, The Hollywood Reporter, citing an anonymous source, reported that Sweeney had agreed to first play a supporting role in Sony's Spider-Man spin-off film Madame Web in order to get Anyone but You made.

Filming

Filming began in New South Wales in February 2023. In May, the film was titled Anyone but You. The movie was filmed in various locations across Sydney, including the Sydney Opera House, Marks Park in Bondi, Palm Beach, Jones Bay Wharf, the Queen Victoria Building, and Barrenjoey Lighthouse.

During production, a scene involving a rescue helicopter almost went wrong due to mechanical issues, requiring an emergency landing. While promoting the film on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Sweeney revealed another incident that had happened during production; while filming the spider scene, the trained huntsman spider that was used actually bit her.

Music

The film's score was produced by Este Haim and Chris Stracey. The film's title track was released by Still Woozy. Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" is prominently featured throughout the film.

Release

Anyone but You premiered at AMC Lincoln Square Theater in New York City on December 11, 2023, and was released by Sony Pictures Releasing in the United States and Canada on December 22, 2023. In response to the success at the box office, Sony Pictures released an extended version of the film in theaters on February 9, 2024, ahead of Valentine's Day.

Anyone but You was released on digital platforms on February 20, 2024, and on Blu-ray on March 12, 2024.

Reception

Box office

Anyone but You grossed $88.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $131.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $220 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $103 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues. As of 2024, it is the highest-grossing live-action Shakespeare film adaptation.

In the United States and Canada, Anyone but You was released alongside Migration, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and The Iron Claw, and was projected to gross around $7 million from 3,055 theaters in its four-day opening weekend. The film made $3.5 million on its first day, including $1.2 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $6.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office. In its second weekend the film made $8.8 million, finishing fifth at the box office. In its third weekend the film made $9.5 million (an increase of 9%), finishing fifth again, before making $7.1 million and finishing in fourth the following week.

Critical response

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 53% of 118 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Slick direction and a pair of tremendously watchable stars make Anyone But You a passably fizzy diversion despite a less than scintillating story." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 52 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an average of four out of five stars, with 57% saying they would definitely recommend the film.

Drew Gillis of The A.V. Club gave the film a B− grade, writing, "No one goes into a movie like Anyone But You for realism, nor should they. The film is made as fun escapism, and it succeeds at that. It's aspirational, but not in the Gossip Girl way of name-dropping designers and outwardly flexing their wealth." Common Sense Media's Tara McNamara gave it 3/5 stars and wrote, "thanks to the casting of appealing actors, the presence of Natasha Bedingfield's 'Unwritten' throughout the film, and the characters' new-adult-accurate dialogue... Gluck's end result is diverting enough that teens and young adults are highly unlikely to notice its flaws." The Hindu's Mini Anthikad-Chhibber said the film was "not wildly inventive", but was "powered by Sweeney and Powell's charisma, with able support from Brown and Hurd, eye candy thanks to Barnet... and laughs from Davidson."

The Guardian's Benjamin Lee gave the film 2/5 stars, writing, "Director Will Gluck... can't turn his leads into more than swimwear models, centring a romcom around them is like watching a kid force two dolls to kiss." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said, "neither screen chemistry nor laughs can be manufactured, especially not with the kind of pedestrian writing in Will Gluck's Anyone But You, which does nothing to reanimate the moribund studio rom-com." Robert Moran of The Age gave it 2.5/5 stars, writing, "Watch the movie; there's no way these guys hooked up. Whatever sparkling chemistry we thought we saw in the film's immaculate PR drip-feed, it's barely there in the final product."

Accolades

References

External links

Official website

Anyone but You at IMDb