The great rom-com stars make it look easy. Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore: When they fall in love on-screen, their charm pulls us in and the transparency of their emotions enables us to feel every moment of yearning and every thrill just as their characters do. But a rom-com lead can also, we recently discovered, turn in such a limp performance that it makes the sheer difficulty of being a rom-com lead obvious. Sydney Sweeney is a good actress, and she was surely trying to put in a rousing performance as the female lead ofthe recent film “Anyone But You.” It just doesn’t work.
A lot of things don’t work about this movie, which nonetheless has become a runaway hit. Basic elements of the plot don’t quite hang together; the characters, even the two leads, are thinner than tissue paper; the movie is lit and staged like an ad for a hotel chain; several scenes, including a crucial one revolving around a giant decorat…
