There were two main reasons I wanted to go and see the new rom-com Anyone But You, starring Sydney Sweeney on the silver screen. Two bouncy, perky, and perfectly formed reasons.
One hundred and forty-three minutes of staring straight at them with a craned neck is enough for any woman to walk out suicidal and any man to walk out drooling. Sydney Sweeney knows this and does it anyway, then does an interview about how she rejects the claims she’s being objectified in a Rolling Stones video to make sure that she keeps her knockers fresh in the news cycle. Regardless of your feelings toward her, for the last two years she has managed to consistently remain a main character of the internet, and I think that she is one of the smartest Hollywood figures of the last 50 or so years.
Anyone But You is a fine film. It has some good lines, mainly delivered by Roger (Bryan Brown), the politically-incorrect bumbling father of the black lesbian bride-to-be. During an attempt to get Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) in bed together to end their yearlong feud, the wedding party, whose characters are loosely based on those of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, talk loudly to manipulate Bea and Ben into falling in love. Roger, in his thick Aussie twang, loudly discusses the pair with his son, Pete, telling him that he thinks Ben should give it a go with “the plump chested one with the sad eyes.” One wonders if executive producer Sydney Sweeney had anything to do with that line.
If the film succeeds at anything, it’s showing studios that the R-rated romantic comedy is back. On its 18th day of release, the film flew to No. 1 at the domestic box office and has so far grossed $58.7 million worldwide. Apart from very beautiful romantic leads, Sweeney and Powell, who spend the majority of the film naked or nearly there, it doesn’t possess any special ingredient but just the regular cheesiness with a Generation Z, Instagramified twist.
In the era of woke or post-woke comedy, where the only things we talk about are journeys and therapy and inclusion, and the only punchlines we deliver are the you-can’t-say-that-but-I’m-going-to-say-it-anyway ones, this film does very well to avoid both. They check the boxes without it feeling forced. The wedding of an interracial lesbian couple feels like it wasn’t chosen to lecture you but to entertain you, and even the repeated depictions of informed consent — “Are you gonna kiss me now?”; “Permission to put my left hand on your right buttock?” — are almost, almost undetectable.
With her valley girl drawl, it’s easy to believe that there’s not much going on in Sweeney’s brain. But the success of Anyone But You is largely down to her. After starting up her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, she came across Ilana Wolpert and Will Gluck’s script telling the story of two people who despise but can’t seem to avoid one another while they’re at a wedding in Sydney. Sweeney, with the help of the hive-mind of the internet sweet on him after his supporting appearance as a young fighter jock in Top Gun: Maverick, had Powell down for leading man from the start. “I really wanted to bring back that hunk of a romantic-comedy leading man. Top Gun: Maverick really set him apart for me. I hopped on a Zoom with him, we met in person a few times, I pitched him the script, he read it. He’s a die-hard rom-com fan, and this really resonated with him.”
If there’s one thing that Sweeney really cares about, it’s tradition. It’s no surprise to me that she wants to revive the classic romantic comedy and, in doing so, cast herself as the blonde, buxom bombshell. She understands what has been missing on screen for the past 20 years: a silly, inconsequential rom-com with beautiful faces and no moral lecture. In her world, women have spent the last few decades rejecting traditional gender roles and striving for recognition in the form of shiny trophies. Sweeney has spent the last few years of interviews lamenting about not yet, at the age of 26, being a mom. In an interview last year, she said, “I always wanted to be a young mom. I love acting, I love the business, I love producing, I love all of it. But what’s the point if I’m not getting to share it with a family?” She continued, “The time will come, and I’ll have four kids. And they will come with me everywhere and be my best friends.”
It is partly this ideology that has seen her transform into every man’s fantasy. That, and the two things I mentioned earlier. And the fact that she spends her spare time restoring classic cars on her TikTok page dedicated to it. Her account, called @Syds_Garage, has gained her 1.7 million followers and a partnership with Ford. Whether she films herself half naked getting sweaty under a bonnet because she really, really likes cars or whether she’s a very clever woman who knows exactly what she’s doing is unimportant. It has hoisted her into the cast of films such as Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. If it were still such a thing, she’d be on a poster on the walls of every teenage boy in the country. It’s not, so she’s one of my friend’s iPhone background. She recognizes that the key to a good film is sex appeal and chemistry, which is why, in the majority of her roles so far, she has been happy to oblige. In Anyone But You in particular, her chemistry with Powell was so convincing on and off screen that the majority of social media users (too young to realize that it’s the oldest trick in Hollywood) believe them to have had an affair.
Sweeney’s acting is nothing to phone home about. In Anyone But You, it is the throwaway lines that she delivers best. Any dialogue with more substance is delivered in a way that sounds like she’s reading the script for the first time. Her roles so far are samey. The slightly mundane love interest of a coked-up finance bro (Anyone But You), the easily manipulated cult member (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), the bitchy, sanctimonious Gen Zer (The White Lotus), and the popular yet insecure high school student (Euphoria). Time will tell if Sweeney is typecast into these for much longer. Either way, many women have had a great career playing to type and relying on the adoration of male fans. Just look at Marilyn Monroe, whose entire career was subpar acting compensated by her looks. And everything went fine for her, kind of.
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Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in the Spectator, the New Statesman, Tatler, the Daily Telegraph, and others.
