Review of Anyone But You, directed by Will Gluck

There was a hot minute in my life where it seemed like everyone was talking about Anyone But You, especially when it had just come out. I don’t know what the marketing for this movie was, if everyone was obsessed with the lead actors, or if we were just in dire need of something that reminded us of 2000s romcoms.

That said, I had no interest in seeing this movie when it came out. But because I go to the movies every Sunday with my sister, we decided to watch this movie because she wanted to see it. She’s more into these kinds of films.

So we went and watched it. Would I have seen it under normal circumstances? Probably not. I would’ve seen it as something that I might’ve watched whenever it landed on streaming, and that would be when I am bored.

But I saw it, so here’s my review!

After a night gone wrong together, two enemies find themselves pushed together at an Australian destination wedding.

We begin this movie with Bea, a Boston University law student who really needs to pee. She runs into a coffee shop, but the disgruntled employee tells her she has to buy something to use the bathroom. Turns out the line is really long, so when Goldman Sachs employee Ben notices her struggle, he pretends she’s his wife.

He buys her a coffee and pastry, and waits for her as she struggles in the bathroom. They getting chatting, and end up spending the day together and falling asleep on the couch. But when she wakes up in the morning, she leaves him there. Halfway through leaving, she returns, but hears him insulting her to a friend. He’s mad she left.

They don’t cross paths until another six months. Turns out Bea’s sister Halle is getting married to his friend’s sister Claudia. Immediately, Bea and Ben start getting nasty with each other, but they’re going to be seeing more of each other—Claudia and Halle become engaged and plan to marry in Sydney, Australia.

During this time, Bea has been struggling. She quit law school and never told her parents, and broke up with her fiancé. She boards her flight to Australia, but discovers that Ben is on her flight. When they land, she also realizes they’re staying in the same home together, much to the frustration of everyone else as they keep fighting.

Things also get more complicated when Ben’s free spirited ex clearly keeps trying to make a move on him, which ends up making Bea feel some things along the way.

Then Bea’s parents invite her ex-fiance, making things even more awkward. Halle and Claudia are sick of all of the fighting, so they enlist other members of the family to come together and try to get the two of them together. However, they are way too obvious about it, and they realize pretty quickly what’s really going on.

That leads Bea and Ben to try and trick everyone else by pretending to be a couple. But somewhere along the way, they actually start to enjoy each other’s company, and when on a boat, they recreate the scene from Titanic at the edge of the boat. However, Bea falls out and Ben jumps in after her.

When in the water, they have a deep conversation, and she admits that she dropped out of school. They spend the night together, but Bea makes a comment about how everything lately is a mistake, which Ben takes badly. He then leaves her behind in the morning, upsetting her.

The next morning, it’s time to pick up the cake. The ex-girlfriend asks Bea if she can get back together with Ben, and she agrees. Ben ends up spilling to his best friend that Bea dropped out of law school. In a dramatic fashion, the cake falls to the floor, and her not being in law school is revealed to everyone.

Halle and Claudia then have a major argument about the two of them, leading them to question why they even are getting married. Ben hears this and tells Bea to pretend that they’re chill with each other, which goes well until Bea sees Margaret, the ex-girlfriend, kissing Ben.

She flees the ceremony, as she’s devastated by this. Ben tells Margaret no and learns that Bea is upset, and he jumps off of a cliff in order to be rescued by the helicopters. He tells them to head to the Sydney Opera House, where he finds Bea there.

He apologizes to Bea in front of the Opera House, and they make up. They go back to the wedding, where Halle and Claudia reveal their argument was fake and an effort to push them back together. Margaret then gets together with Bea’s ex-fiance.

Overall Thoughts

I mean, I thought this movie definitely had the 2000s romcom vibes. It was dumb in the long run, but it was fun for what it was. I didn’t completely hate it, but I thought that it was something that pretty much exists to pass the time.

I can see how someone else might love this movie, though. It fits right into the aesthetics and tropes that a lot of people tend to love these days, especially when it comes to TikTok literature. Not my cup of tea, though.

Go watch it if you were planning to! It was nice to watch this with a vocal crowd for sure.

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