Anyone But You (2023)

Rated R for nudity, sexuality, language (especially the same word over-and-over), and drug references.  The movie isn't quite sure if it wants to be an all audiences rom-com or a raunchy comedy.  It goes for the R, but also keeps the tone of a traditional rom-com.  Regardless, there's nothing here that makes it necessarily all-audiences.  But you also don't feel as skeevy as watching something like Porky's.  

DIRECTOR:  Will Gluck

The biggest issue that you'll probably hear from me is that I teach Much Ado about Nothing.  I'm the one who picked this when my wife asked to watch a rom-com.  She was looking at her phone.  I just hit play.  Any complaints that I may have are mostly my fault.  And I'll be honest with you, I didn't hate it. For a guy who doesn't care for rom-coms to say that he didn't hate a rom-com, that's kind of a win.

That being said, I didn't exactly like it either.

In the pantheon of rom-coms, there are a select few that are modern adaptations of Shakespeare plays.  The language is contemporary, as are the locations.  Often, there are nods to the original shows.  Names tend to be variations of the original character names.  Anyone But You, for instance, has Ben and Bea for Benedick and Beatrice, respectively.  The rest of the cast has playful variations of their respective counterparts.  It's fun.  These movies tend to be made for audiences who want to have a good time first and Shakespeare fans second.  I get it.  Why pigeonhole your audience with something that is too inside baseball?  Now, I get that people still talk about Ten Things I Hate about You.  I saw it back in high school.  I hate to admit, but high school was a long time ago.  I remember being unimpressed, but more along the lines of it just being another movie. I don't want to judge the whole subgenre.  

If you don't know me, I adore Shakespeare.  I'm, unfortunately, a fan of the things I've seen and am wildly overwhelmed when it comes to the things I haven't.  I'm ashamed to say that I like what I like.  But what I like, I love.  Much Ado has slowly risen in my estimation to be one of my favorite Shakespeare comedies.  That's not a hot take for a lot of people.  If you met me in high school, you'll remember my obsession with A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet.  (I know Hamlet isn't a comedy.  I'm just dropping that because I'm still obsessed with Hamlet and that will probably never change.) But since teaching Much Ado, I've kind of become obsessed.  I have a version with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, which is scratching a lovely part of my Doctor Who fandom. So when I start talking about a different version, a version that seems to like but not love Much Ado, you have to keep this all in mind.  It might be too precious for me.

The thing about Much Ado, as well as a lot of Shakespeare's comedies, is that --as silly as they can get --there are moments of true gravitas and pathos in these stories.  While a lot of us take the Benedick and Beatrice exchanging barbs for laughs as the memorable part of the story, Much Ado about Nothing gets quite dark in the second half of the play.  For a guy who infamously wrote a play that doesn't understand women (The Taming of the Shrew), he also wrote Much Ado about Nothing, where Beatrice --in defending her shamed cousin --screams "If I were a man...I'd eat his heart in the marketplace."  It's amazing.  See, I enjoy all of the quirky wacky comedy of errors stuff that Much Ado offers.  But honestly, it would be just another story if it was just that. What makes me love Much Ado are the highs and lows that Shakespeare takes us on.  

Which all leads me to Anyone But You.  Anyone But You is a fun rom-com.  It's meant to sell popcorn. I get it. Drama sells popcorn.  But Gluck and his company here want this to be a paint-by-numbers rom-com.  Ironically, to make the movie safer for audiences, they kind of have to tear into the conceit of Much Ado, the very movie they're homaging.  One of the motifs of Much Ado is the role of masks.  In the original, there is a literal masquerade where characters --mostly wholly aware of who is wearing what mask --pretend to be other characters.  I applaud the filmmakers, in their attempt to turn Much Ado on its head, use this motif in their reinterpretation.  Much in the way that the cast knows each other in the masquerade to be lying, I do kind of applaud that Ben and Bea pick up on falsehood quickly.  (In the case of Bea, far quicker than Ben.) I have a love / hate thing about Ben and Bea faking their relationship for the sake of others.  Yeah, it's something different in terms of looking at the Shakespeare play.  But as different as it is, that's more of a modern rom-com trope, isn't it?

The faking being lovers thing is kind of hack.  We pretend to be into each other until we ultimately are into each other.  I know that there are probably people claiming that Shakespeare romantic tropes are hack.  That's a bit unfair because he was the foundation of the hack.  When you make something popular, you aren't a hack.  The people copying you are hacks.  At one point, even though all of the setting and characters have counterparts in Much Ado about Nothing, the story is so far off the rails that it isn't really a send up of Much Ado anymore.  One of the little gimmicks that the movie does is try to insert one of the Shakespeare lines into modern conversation. Often, the running gag will be "Ooh, that's good!" But just to show how far off the play is from what it is intended to be, it misunderstands the actual words being said.

Perhaps one of the most famous lines in Much Ado ties to its theme: "Some Cupids kill with arrows; some with traps."   Now, in the original, I'm pretty sure that Hero says this to Ursula so that Beatrice doesn't here.  But with Pete / Pedro saying it directly so Ben hears, it ultimately shows that the line is contradictory to the actual goal that Pete has.  Pete's trying to convince Ben that Bea is in love with him, so they have this whole dumbshow where they feign a conversation about gossip, hoping that Ben will hear.  But when he shouts out "Some Cupids kill", it's meant to make Ben believe that the entire plot is real.  Why have that line there?  I know, this is me complaining about something stupid.  But it is indicative of how the whole thing is almost a misunderstanding of the text.  If the entire thing is a nod to the original, where is the meat of the story.  Honestly, Much Ado, as much as the barbs are fun, is about how far people will go for love.  When Beatrice says "Kill Claudio", we as an audience are forced to ask how we would our own moral codes.  This?  This is just the same as every other rom-com with a Shakespeare skin.

In terms of quality of movie, Anyone But You mostly does the job. I have to be honest. I feel like people are really mean to Sydney Sweeney.  Ms. Sweeney, if you are reading this, I apologize for any criticism I throw your way.  Sweeney isn't great.  I'll admit that. But she's also not as terrible as people make her out to be.  And this next comment makes me even more of a jerk because I think that Glen Powell's newfound fame is totally deserved.  I don't know what makes a leading man, but I feel like it is me upholding the patriarchy by saying that he's got it.  Like, that dude is charming as heck and sells every line perfectly.  Why am I part of the problem here, guys?  I give Glen Powell a pass for being good in something meh while I acknowledge that Sydney Sweeney is not great in something meh as well.  I WANT THEM BOTH TO BE GREAT!  

Sure, the jokes mostly work.  I got a couple of laughs out of it.  I do find the characters to be all over the place in terms of behavior.  Their Meet Cute is so different from the follow up of these characters.  We're meant to like these characters from moment one.  Anyone But You does something interesting with the Much Ado thing by letting us see their first relationship. Much Ado has Benedick and Beatrice together, implied by the line "You always end with a Jade's Trick; I know you of old."  But there's the comedy of errors things.  Bea leaves, afraid of this relationship. She returns to find Ben ragging on her.  Here's where the movie loses me.  They see each other again, clearly upset about how their first date ended up.  I get that.  But the problem is, they both spell out exactly what happened.  It's insane that these two don't forgive each other enough to stop yelling at each other over events.  Once the mix-up is made plain, shouldn't there be some reconciliation?  It makes both of them look like bad people.  It bugs me! 

You can see that I'm pretty strung up about this.  Again Much Ado is precious to me.  I wish that I could be a guy who just watches rom-coms and shuts my brain off.  But between being generic enough and taking all of the meat out of the original, this movie is just okay.  I want to like it, but I don't.