Sony Pictures’ Anyone But You is FINALLY out, but we all knew that, didn’t we? I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I feel like Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney have been promoting this movie since exactly one year ago, so to see the movie finally out in theaters is still shocking.
I finally got to see their on-screen chemistry right on the big screen at my local drive-in theater after catching Mean Girls. I knew as much as about anyone else did based on the trailer and social media:
A girl and a guy are stuck on a trip together, but they have to pretend they’re dating to get everyone off their back. Plot twist: They hate each other for some mysterious reason. Then, something about Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” song suddenly made its way onto my nightly scroll on TikTok.
Twenty to thirty minutes into the movie, you discover why they hate each other.
Dramatic pause
I’m not going to spoil the reason for you here, but let’s just say this whole movie could have been finished in 45 minutes if they had communicated with one another rather than believing whatever they heard. This was my whole gripe with the movie. The reason isn’t even that solid for them to banter back and forth throughout the entire half of the movie with reasons the other person is the worst human being ever. It was SUCH a childish thing and irked me to my core.
But alas, here we are.
The rest of the movie goes into the plot we all knew about based on the trailer: they pretend to date one another, but only for Bea (Sydney Sweeney) to get her ex (Darren Barnet) off her back and for Ben (Glen Powell) to get his one-time fling (Charlee Fraser) jealous. Hi-jinks ensue during the “acting,” but let’s remember, this is a rom-com, and they find their way back together even though they claim to hate one another.
Anyone But You hit all the rom-com pillars. It was cute, quirky, and sometimes didn’t make sense at all, but it made you somewhat butterflies by the movie’s end. Plus, shout out to the 2004 callback to the song “Unwritten,” which is now finding a new spark in pop culture other than being tied to MTV’s The Hills.
Would I watch it again? Probably not, unless it was on TV (TNT or TBS, anyone?), but I do give it its props for the 10/10 marketing before the movie was out. That’s what really drew the people.
