February 22, 2024 | FEATURES | By Anya Jones
For some of you, there was a brief and fleeting moment on your social media of choice where you were inundated with views of Sydney Sweeney’s fluttery lashes and Glen Powell’s goofy smolder. Perhaps you ignored these videos. Perhaps you heard off-hand comments about them. Perhaps you became surprisingly educated about the romantic pasts and presents of both parties …perhaps you have no idea what I’m talking about.
The details are unimportant. All you need to know is that Sydney and Glen put on a splendid performance of flirtation in a PR effort for the ages, in which Powell doubled down on a triumphant split from then-girlfriend Gigi Paris. A small portion of the world (American women ages16-30) held their breath as they watched Sweeney continue to parade around with her (much older) fiancé. They remain together to date. Trivial matters, relatively harmless gossip.
As you may have been able to infer thus far, I am one of these “people.” Sweeney and Powell dominated my for-you page (FYP) on TikTok, despite the disinterest I verbally expressed to my phone. I was disinterested because I was so overwhelmed by how much I truly desired their relationship to be real. It was a bizarre cognitive dissonance that I was berated with and tortured by. This is what ultimately landed me in Tinseltown on a Saturday at 4:15 p.m.
Strapped with admittedly low expectations, I settled into my seat.
This is actually a story about the other people in the theater:
Specifically, it’s about the two elderly women behind me and the elderly couple two rows below me and slightly to the left. It was the tiniest bit shocking to walk into a theater for a romantic comedy rated “R” and see only people over the age of probably 70. What I soon learned was that their commentary would undoubtedly be the highlight of this movie.
The 25 minutes of trailers began on schedule. At the completion of each trailer, the woman of the elderly couple to the left below me made the most audible “hmm” known to the human vocal cord. Not only that, but it was somehow completely devoid of any emotion. It wasn’t speculative, nor was it pensive or curious. It was the whirring of a drone, the engine of the Honda Civic that’s on its last miles, the sound a chair makes when it’s pushed along a hardwood floor, a vibrator, someone looking at their phone while you are trying to tell them about crossing the street (apathetic). Deadpool slices 17 men dressed in white uniforms and the trailer ends: “hmm.” Matt Damon holds a briefcase and the trailer ends: “hmm.” A neon letter falls on Madame Web and the trailer ends: “hmm.” By the sixth occurrence, I was cracking up.
So, I was inevitably primed when I heard the rather loud voices of the two elderly women behind me. It came right as the tried-and-true Marvel letters banged themselves onto the screen: “Madame Web.” One of the women remarks with such conviction, “I am not gonna watch that.” I appreciated her honesty and her excellent nose for bullshit.
It was this same woman who made the closing comments before the movie officially started. The trailers had wrapped up, and the Cinemark propaganda was rolling.
“Was this nominated for anything?”
To which the other responds, “No!” She said it with attitude and surety, as she should.
“Well then why are we here?”
“This one has subtitles.”
If “Anyone But You” were to have a tagline, it should be: “Come see ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ but with zero continuity for wet hair staying wet.” If not that, then it should be this conversation.
A movie just entertaining enough that the fact it was showing with subtitles was a valid reason to spend $13.
There were plenty of “oohs” and “ahhs” throughout the movie, but my personal favorite was when the audience was surprised with the tip of a dick. We had seen Powell’s butt, and we would soon see Sweeney’s bare chest. But no one was prepared for this random Australian man’s actual urethra. Just BAM, staring down the barrel of the gun. So, I was in complete solidarity with the elderly woman behind me when she exclaimed, “My GOD!” I imagine her hand jumped across her chest as well.
Suffice it to say my favorite part of this movie was the people I watched it with, and I secretly believe in the small possibility that it was more than just the subtitles that brought these elderly folks to watch the undeniable chemistry between two well-oiled people – that it was a stray PR video that made one of them go “Her fiancé is 40?!”