Is Sydney Sweeney's Anyone But You the grand return of the mediocre rom-com?
Sony PicturesIt's been released on streaming platforms and only has a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes – yet movie-goers are still leaving home to see the mid-budget flick. Why?
Anyone But You, the new film starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, is getting fans to the theatre. The film, a modernised take on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing from director Will Gluck, was released on 26 December 2023, and has been a slow-yet steady burn at the box office. After this past weekend, the little romantic comedy that could has earned £163m ($207m) globally, surging past The Marvels.
The movie follows Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell), who find themselves forced together during a wedding after their extraordinary first date goes bad. Plot-wise, it's nothing groundbreaking. Yet it has grabbed the attention of movie-goers – including Risa Bramon Garcia, a producer and casting director who worked on films such as True Romance, 200 Cigarettes, and shows like The Affair and Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life. She tells BBC Culture that she intends to see the film largely because of its popularity in the zeitgeist right now. While plenty of people love "a good rom com", she says, "this one in particular has taken hold" of movie-goer interest.
Indeed, Anyone But You's box office success is intriguing, especially because romantic comedies haven't gotten people off the couch the way they once did in more than a decade. According to a 2023 Reuters report, the 1990s through 2000s was the "golden age" for romantic comedies – kicked off no doubt by 1989's When Harry Met Sally. Films such as Sleepless in Seattle, My Best Friend's Wedding and Notting Hill, to name a few, had movie-goers lined up at the box office window – with the 2002 flick My Big Fat Greek Wedding perhaps learning from its decade of successful 90s predecessors to become the highest grossing rom-com of all time at £290m ($368.7m).
While fans might remember the titles (and the funniest or most heartfelt lines) of the 90s and early-noughties golden age fondly, some female stars who were known for their rom-com performances, felt betrayed by the way their films were ultimately viewed. In a 2022 interview with the New York Times, Sandra Bullock, who starred in films such as Miss Congeniality and While You Were Sleeping, revealed that she stopped making rom-coms on purpose because she felt they were "undervalued". She was being type-cast into the roles, she said, while men who made rom coms weren't subjected to the same fate.
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"Anytime someone said 'chick flick' or 'rom-com', it was just disparaging," Bullock told the Times. “I think when everything swung toward the very masculine action-adventure, women got relegated to the arm piece, or the damsel in distress. Then, when rom-coms came back in it was always like, 'Oh, we’ll let the women come back in, but it’s going to be this formula that we like, and it can’t be too edgy."
While some erstwhile romantic comedy stars began choosing different roles, by 2010, another sea change was evident: movie-goers weren't shelling out for tickets to rom coms. Interest had fallen, and Hollywood producers started to bet, instead, on superhero action films.
Scott Meslow, film critic and author of From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy tells BBC Culture that while there has "always been an audience for rom coms", mid-budget films faded out. "At a time when Hollywood was increasingly betting on $200-plus million blockbusters with hopes of a billion-dollar gross (and a cinematic universe) – or, on the other end, a smaller-scale 'prestige' movie that might win a Best Picture Oscar – rom-coms were uniquely devalued in the marketplace."
Now, Anyone But You's box office success has critics wondering if rom coms are coming back in full force. After all, the film didn't have a big budget – £19.7m ($25m) as opposed to the Marvels £190m ($240m). It didn't have special effects, superheroes or even the draw of tropical scenery. Plus, it's already been released to stream on AppleTV and Amazon Prime, and it only has a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – solidly mediocre. And yet.
Sony PicturesThe film does star Sydney Sweeney, however, who also appeared in two massively successful series, Euphoria and White Lotus – both of which earned her Emmy nominations. After photos of Sweeney and Powell together went viral, fans theorised that the co-stars were dating. The actors have maintained that they aren't together, and Sweeney joked about the rumour in her Saturday Night Live monologue over the weekend.
Meslow, for one, thinks the idea of the leads also having an offscreen romance likely helped the film, but posits that its popularity has been "largely been due to Gen Z moviegoers" – an entire generation whom "Hollywood has never seriously courted as a rom-com audience" before.
"Those Gen-Z moviegoers really found Anyone But You as a word-of-mouth hit, and it's definitely worth noting that the movie's slow-burn success is due, in no small part, to a viral TikTok trend built around the Natasha Bedingfield song Unwritten, which features heavily in the movie's plot." The TikTok trend Meslow is referring to has users capturing their vibe after seeing the film. Even Bedingfield herself got in on it, posting her own TikTok mashup.
Anyone But You's continued success even months after its theatrical debut may signify that audiences – particularly Gen Z – are yearning for a new "golden age" and the next Notting Hill. And Hollywood is paying close attention.
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