2023, Will Gluck (Annie) -- download
Of side-note, one of our favourites (Serendipity) is, in retrospect, one that Kent no longer appreciates, but is one of his better more-bloggy (personal as opposed to movie review) posts, which is why I am here.
This is not a good movie. Why did we watch this? Because it makes nods to Much Ado About Nothing, a Shakespeare play where people con two cantankerous ex-lovers into reuniting. The problem is that in this movie they are not really ex-lovers, just did the "talk all night" thing and then, by way of misunderstanding, said mean things to each other. And for that brief encounter, we are supposed to expect unending animosity between them. I honestly don't think most people keep that kind of brief stuff in their brainpan, well, except at random moments, like brushing your teeth, where your brain dredges up something entirely annoying & embarrassing from your past and forces you to obsess on it for the next four hours. Just me? Sorry.
Of note, our fav "Much Ado...", the Branagh edition, is also a Kate Beckinsale movie.
Bea (Sydney Sweeney, The White Lotus) has a meet-cure with Ben (Glen Powell, Scream Queens) at a coffee shop and they spend the entire day together. Even though they don't have sex, she sneaks out but after she tells herself she made a mistake, she returns only to hear him saying something mean about her. They bump into each other at a club where Bea's sister Halle (Hadley Robinson, Utopia) and Claudia (Alexandra Shipp, X-Men: Dark Phoenix), the sister of Ben's best friend Peter (GaTa, Dave) have begun dating. They are even meaner to each other, like exponentially so.
The girls get engaged and the wedding is to be in Sydney, Australia. Of course, Ben and Bea are there, as are their ex-es and everything is awwwwkward. That is, until some of the family members decide to try and get them together Shakespeare style, i.e. have each of them overhear that the other is secretly in love. They decide to play along, for their own reasons. As expected, by us, they begin actually falling for each other.
The movie could have had some Shakespearian level fun, but I would have been entirely fine if it dropped the whole schtick as long as it had stayed witty, but instead it just opted for hijinx such as falling off a boat, or playing on Australia's reputation for outrageously large spiders hiding in dark corners... or testicles. Powell is serviceable as a leading man, but Sweeney is just ... a problem. She strikes me as one of those actors that with the right role, and the right director, she can really latch onto a character. This is not one, and there were many scenes she just didn't seem interested in doing. But they both look incredible in bathing suits so....
But even in a bad romcom, as long as the mains have a certain chemistry, you can forgive just about any misstep. Alas... I didn't understand why they were so fucking angry at each other, and I didn't understand, doubly so, how they could turn it off, but for the idea of two shallow people wanting to have sex with a sexy person.
Final note. Even in charmless movies, I can enjoy someone giving it their all, and this award goes to GaTa as Pete, the best friend. His character and his performance is always 110% and I thoroughly enjoyed his loyal, measured, but kind of goofy character.
This was an absolutely massive box office success that rocketed both on-the-rise stars Sweeney and Powell to the head of their contemporary class. I think it speaks less to them being young, beautiful (and so white) people than it does the absolute dearth of romcoms coming out in cinemas. The discussion I hear about this film in the months since it came out is mostly that sort of "isn't it great to see a romcom do so well, too bad it's this one".
ReplyDelete