Anyone But You Parent Guide

A meet-cute between Bea and Ben (played charmingly by Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell) leads to instant connection, long conversation, and a night of passion on Ben’s couch. The morning after sees misunderstanding and hurt feelings, which deepen and fester over the next few months.

The animosity is a problem because Bea and Ben are going to be seeing a lot more of each other. Bea’s sister, Halle (Hadley Robinson) is marrying Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), the sister of Ben’s best friend, Pete (Gata). The wedding is being held in Claudia and Pete’s home country of Australia, which requires their friends and family to spend time together in closer quarters than normal. To make things more awkward, Ben’s ex is attending, as are Bea’s parents, who have matchmaking plans of their own. In a moment of desperation, Ben and Bea decide to pretend that they’re a couple. Can the two frenemies convince everyone that their romance is for real? What happens if they start to believe it themselves?

“Pretend partners” is a familiar plot device for romantic comedies. I’ve seen this movie before, in numerous iterations, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Anyone But You falls on the midline for the genre. On the bright side, the leads manage to inject their real and fake relationships with more emotional nuance than I expected. The Australian setting is gorgeous, the secondary cast members entertaining, and the general air of good cheer that pervades the tale makes for a frothy little film.

The movie might be predictable, but the screenwriters put a bit more effort into their work than you see in much of the genre. The plot is clearly influenced by Shakespeare’s comedy, “Much Ado About Nothing”, which stars the squabbling pair of Beatrice and Benedick. This script lacks the wit that the Bard wrote into the couple’s banter, but it keeps the element of contrary couple and interfering, well-meaning friends. Quotes from the play pop up throughout the film, offering fun Easter eggs for fans of Shakespeare. If you’re going to borrow, you might as well borrow from the best.

Unfortunately, Anyone But You goes overboard on negative content. There are two scenes of marijuana use, over seventy profanities (including 49 sexual expletives) and a whole lot of sexual innuendo and activity. This isn’t just a movie about romance; it’s wound up tight with sexual tension. Bea and Ben begin their relationship with sex, and that physical attraction remains at the core of their bond. They also heat up the screen with a steamy sex scene that involves showering together, undressing one another, and embracing in bed. There are no visible genitals, but there’s plenty of skin, including the side of Bea’s breast. More nudity is to be seen in other parts of the film, with a woman’s breasts fully visible as she sunbathes topless, and several scenes of male buttock nudity in both sexual and non-sexual contexts.

The excessive negative content is frustrating because this could have been a decently watchable PG-13 rom-com. The genre could always use family-friendly movies that rise above those cheaply-produced Hallmark specials – but this doesn’t fit the bill.