The opening 'dash to the coffee shop meets chivalry & the bestowal of the bathroom key' scene tells us a lot about the actors right away. Not the characters, the actors. They can't. Especially The Sweeney. The guy sounds vaguely like George Clooney, the poor man's Cary Grant, so this dude must be for spectators on life support. The Sween can always count on her bristols, but our leading lad is basically an underpants model, and anyone checking out his package can't even pretend to be listening to his patter.
Anyway, they walk around talking, they eat together at his place, talk more, fall asleep on the sofa. Re. The walking and talking: if you're starting to picture the wonderful Linklater directed 'Before...' trilogy, absolutely do not do so. This is not a smart dialogue movie. These people can barely walk persuasively, much less talk. The Sweenster sneaks off then wonders, Why did I sneak off? So she returns just in time to hear Mr Packet badmouthing her to his supposedly sassy buddy. Huh. Off she goes again, walking past a wall that has a quotation from Much Ado About Nothing inexplicably stamped on it. We're in a movie where even the murals look phony. But wait! There's more. The next scene is signposted (literally), "SIX MONTHS LATER". I suppose that's meant to be 'meta'.
Across a crowded room: Woman 1: "Pete!" Woman 2: "Hey!" Mr Packet: (waving) "Claudia!" Mr Sass: (waving) "Holly!"
The way you just read that in your head is the way it was actually said. Like in a read-through.
The director of this movie is the same creative genius behind the Timberlake/Kunis debacle, Friends With Benefits. Ok, so, we know our level: Low. But my use of the word debacle reminds me that the plot synopsis of Anyone But You, when I first read it, sounded suspiciously like the Keanu Reeves / Winona Ryder movie, Destination Wedding. Only this time we get beach and swimsuits instead of wine country and elegance. We also got one-note performances in Destination, but to its credit those were one-note performances of deliciously sardonic dialogue. The one-note was right for the two-hander, both characters defined by their being at odds with existence, their curmudgeonly misanthropy. They were disagreeable and their disagreeableness made them a perfect match. Now, what do we have here, other than clunky dialogue, flat vocals, and symmetrical vanity? Nada. Zero. The Adventures of Jockstrap and Tatas.
Allegedly this movie's a hit, despite the abundant flaws. How can that be? Well, I hate to say it, but Friends With Benefits was a hit too. So, romcom being a genre, there's also a formula for selling a movie in that genre, and evidently director Will Gluck has the (un)happy knack of knowing how. One shouldn't be surprised. Fifty Shades was a hit, and it was terrible, based upon a terrible book, which was also a hit. Commercial success and artistic merit are rarely found in bed together. It may also be that there's something wrong with the current 'gen', an inability to really value the popular entertainment legacy of their own culture, perhaps? Are we on the brink of anothar dark age? Is nostalgia a warning sign of impending collapse?
How to sign off on this review? If you are prepared to endorse Anyone But You then you absolutely need to change your whole entire way of being. You're wasting your heartbeats.
Vapid tripe.
P. S. The drying your pants with the hand dryer bit, near the beginning, is stolen from a Mr Bean movie. In any event, it's totally unoriginal, except this time it's a woman instead of a man being clutzy.
Anyway, they walk around talking, they eat together at his place, talk more, fall asleep on the sofa. Re. The walking and talking: if you're starting to picture the wonderful Linklater directed 'Before...' trilogy, absolutely do not do so. This is not a smart dialogue movie. These people can barely walk persuasively, much less talk. The Sweenster sneaks off then wonders, Why did I sneak off? So she returns just in time to hear Mr Packet badmouthing her to his supposedly sassy buddy. Huh. Off she goes again, walking past a wall that has a quotation from Much Ado About Nothing inexplicably stamped on it. We're in a movie where even the murals look phony. But wait! There's more. The next scene is signposted (literally), "SIX MONTHS LATER". I suppose that's meant to be 'meta'.
Across a crowded room: Woman 1: "Pete!" Woman 2: "Hey!" Mr Packet: (waving) "Claudia!" Mr Sass: (waving) "Holly!"
The way you just read that in your head is the way it was actually said. Like in a read-through.
The director of this movie is the same creative genius behind the Timberlake/Kunis debacle, Friends With Benefits. Ok, so, we know our level: Low. But my use of the word debacle reminds me that the plot synopsis of Anyone But You, when I first read it, sounded suspiciously like the Keanu Reeves / Winona Ryder movie, Destination Wedding. Only this time we get beach and swimsuits instead of wine country and elegance. We also got one-note performances in Destination, but to its credit those were one-note performances of deliciously sardonic dialogue. The one-note was right for the two-hander, both characters defined by their being at odds with existence, their curmudgeonly misanthropy. They were disagreeable and their disagreeableness made them a perfect match. Now, what do we have here, other than clunky dialogue, flat vocals, and symmetrical vanity? Nada. Zero. The Adventures of Jockstrap and Tatas.
Allegedly this movie's a hit, despite the abundant flaws. How can that be? Well, I hate to say it, but Friends With Benefits was a hit too. So, romcom being a genre, there's also a formula for selling a movie in that genre, and evidently director Will Gluck has the (un)happy knack of knowing how. One shouldn't be surprised. Fifty Shades was a hit, and it was terrible, based upon a terrible book, which was also a hit. Commercial success and artistic merit are rarely found in bed together. It may also be that there's something wrong with the current 'gen', an inability to really value the popular entertainment legacy of their own culture, perhaps? Are we on the brink of anothar dark age? Is nostalgia a warning sign of impending collapse?
How to sign off on this review? If you are prepared to endorse Anyone But You then you absolutely need to change your whole entire way of being. You're wasting your heartbeats.
Vapid tripe.
P. S. The drying your pants with the hand dryer bit, near the beginning, is stolen from a Mr Bean movie. In any event, it's totally unoriginal, except this time it's a woman instead of a man being clutzy.