You wouldn’t think that the recent Oscar nominee for Best Picture (Celine Song’s “Past Lives”) has much in common with the Will Gluck romantic-comedy “Anyone But You”, but both films are an unwelcome reminder that contemporary romances keep forgetting the most important thing – a burning romance. I left both films with a similar ambivalence. Is this the best we can do for romance on screen?
It’s been 14 years since director Will Gluck’s winning sophomore feature “Easy A”, and his subsequent oeuvre since has been a case of diminishing returns. That film, a very loose adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” features a very funny and very game Emma Stone playing comedic romance to great effect. “Anyone But You” (co-written with Ilana Wolpert) is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, but this very loose adaptation of a familiar literary work has none of the easy charm of “Easy A”. Instead, “Anyone But You” is yet another entry in a long line of Hollywood romantic comedies that feels too lethargic to excite, and too contrived in its attempts to eke romantic gold out of the duelling charms of Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell.
