Much Ado About Glen Powell

The rising star battles Sydney Sweeney in "Anyone But You."

Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You. (Source.)

Glen Powell went to Los Angeles to make it big as an actor. Instead, he got a gig reading romcom scripts for Lynda Obst, an old-school movie producer whose bark was worse than her bite.

Powell grew up watching romantic comedies with his two sisters in Austin, Texas. He loved The Wedding Singer, My Best Friend’s Wedding, 10 Things I Hate About You and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, an Obst production. (Other hits in her arsenal: Sleepless in Seattle and One Fine Day.) For endless days, he hunkered down in Obst’s office at Sony Pictures, studying script after script, learning the ropes and the tropes, forming opinions on what worked and what didn’t and sharing the intel with his boss. He learned what makes a romcom last. The ones that stand the test of time, he told Vogue, are “comfort food. You don’t want a romcom to completely reinvent the wheel, because then it stops being comforting.” He got a kick out of reading screenplays that stuck to formula while playing within it. Powell’s early education prepared him for his future as one of Hollywood’s best new romantic heroes — and one of the few high-profile volunteers who will accept a role in a comic love story without turning his nose up.

Last Thursday on The View, Kate Hudson, one of the best romantic heroines from the Aughts, declared that it is “hard to get male movie stars to make romcoms,” lamenting, “As long as we can get more Marvel guys to like, you know, ‘Hey, come to a romcom!,’ I think that’s a big part of the formula, too.” She then offered her perspective on why we return to genre classics like Sleepless time and time again. It’s not just that they’re comforting. It’s that “they had the best writers,” she said.

She’s right. The words are everything. With the right words, the right actor can sizzle up the screen. And if the words leave something to be desired, he’ll manage to charm his way through the bad parts until you only remember the good.

Back to Glen Powell. After the holidays, I bought a ticket to see the romcom Anyone But You in the theater. It opened December 22 and will likely start streaming this spring. So far, this raunchy spin on Much Ado About Nothing has collected around $60 million worldwide; it had a very nice sales bump this past weekend, likely because Christmas chaos is over, and moviegoers have extra time on their hands. All I really knew going in was that Powell and Sydney Sweeney play enemies who reunite at a destination wedding. I’d read the breathless tabloid headlines about the pair maybe-dating on location in Australia. I liked Sweeney in White Lotus and Powell in the clever Netflix romcom Set It Up and as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick. She is much hipper than Powell; meanwhile, he looks like the poster child for finance bros.

They should not have strong chemistry and yet: You could cut theirs with a knife. Not since I read an Emily Henry book had I felt residual butterflies from two characters meeting for the first time. The movie opens with Bea (Sweeney), a sardonic law student, walking into a coffee shop. She desperately has to pee, but the barista won’t give her the key to the bathroom until she buys something. Unfortunately, the line to order is long and slow-moving. Bea makes an obscure and ingenious legal argument for skirting the line. Her plea falls on indifferent ears. But she catches the eye of Ben (Powell), a smooth operator who works at Goldman (of course); he pretends to be her husband and orders her coffee. He waits for her outside the bathroom. They wind up spending the whole day on an impromptu date, basking in the glow of a surprising connection, the kind that brightens your life when you least expect it. That rose-colored haze soon wears off as Bea overhears Ben dissing her to a friend. Stung, she walks away. Romance is for fools. And she won’t be fooled again.

Bea and Ben cross paths six months later under awkward circumstances. Her sister (Hadley Robinson) and his friend (Alexandra Shipp) are getting married. Small world! That means the foes must breathe the same air in close proximity leading up to the nuptials Down Under. Due to miscommunication and hurt feelings, they only use insults and snide remarks while speaking to each other. It is patently obvious, given their verbal repartee and stolen glances, that they belong together. They have an unspoken understanding that they are a perfect match and no one else will do. Over the course of 90 minutes, they must find a way to set aside their petty squabbles and deeper fears of commitment and take a chance on love. It is so satisfying to watch them merge as they figure out how to live with each other, since they can’t live without each other.

All told, Anyone But You contains weak points. The funniest bits involve physical comedy — Ben shooting his tongue out like a lizard; Bea contorting herself like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment while stealing his airplane cookie; a beefcake surfer (Joe Davidson) swimming with the zeal of an unhinged dolphin — and yet, the whole of the endeavor fails to capture the zing of that very first Meet Cute. While the writers provide Bea with a rich backstory that explains her emotional baggage, they don’t allow us to get to know Ben in equal fashion. Powell works overtime to fill in the gaps and deliver distracting silliness and displays of skin. He flaunts a six-pack to rival a Jeremy Allen White Calvin Klein ad. He belts the lyrics to “Unwritten" like nobody’s listening. He is a font of limitless charm.

Powell posing in a recent Bustle photoshoot. (Source.)

I have decided, despite my prior skepticism on the matter, that Powell is a movie star. And finally, 35 years in the making, his career is taking off. He’s set to headline the upcoming action flick Twisters, which will most certainly lead to more of the same and possibly to Marvel. I can see Powell following Chris Evans’ lead and balancing a Captain America with a chic role in a Rian Johnson whodunit. (As the sleek new face of the Italian luxury fashion house Brioni, Powell is well on his way.) I picture him leaving romcoms behind, as Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds have done, and taking advice Tom Cruise shared with him to heart. On the set of Top Gun, Cruise told Powell, “If you want to make movies of a certain size and scope and scale, you have to figure out what can connect with everyone around the world in every territory.”

Hollywood has long been handed to the nerds, men who haven’t the slightest idea how to produce a romance with staying power. Sure, big-budget disaster movies are easier international sells compared with a character-driven romantic comedy, and promise bigger fame and checks, but I hope a romcom enthusiast like Powell doesn’t avoid the genre forever. I wonder what would happen if a scribe as good as Cameron Crowe at his peak wrote a Jerry Maguire for him. Forget computer-generated tornados. Show me Powell as a douchebag workaholic who falls for a cute single mom and undergoes a hilarious, heartwarming personal evolution in the process. If I were Powell’s agent, I’d shout: SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

In the meantime, got any good scripts lying around, Lynda Obst?

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Happy New Year, friends! I hope you got some much-needed rest and relaxation over the hectic holiday season. I traveled to Sedona with my family and spent lots of time gawking at those otherworldly red-rock formations that previously I’d seen only in pictures. (I was told about the various spiritual vortices that distribute healing energy throughout the rugged landscape but I steered clear because of what happened to Andy Samberg in Palm Springs.) Anyway: Have you seen Anyone But You? Which actors would you like to see star in a romcom?