What Is the Audience Score for Anyone but You on Rotten Tomatoes

“Anyone but You” earned an audience score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, placing it in the “Certified Fresh” category and reflecting strong approval from moviegoers who saw the 2023 romantic comedy.

This score represents a significant divergence from the film’s critics’ Tomatometer rating of just 47%, creating one of the most notable gaps between critical and audience reception in recent rom-com releases. The 39-point difference underscores a fundamental disconnect: what professional film critics dismissed as formulaic or unoriginal, everyday audiences embraced as entertaining, feel-good cinema.

The 86% audience score is particularly notable because it signals that the vast majority of viewers who attended “Anyone but You” found it worthy of recommendation. This Certified Fresh designation carries weight in the streaming age, where potential viewers often consult Rotten Tomatoes as their primary decision-making tool.

When a film achieves an audience score in this range, it typically indicates broad appeal and satisfaction across demographic groups, even if critics were less convinced of the film’s artistic merit.

Table of Contents

• Why Did Audiences Love “Anyone but You” So Much More Than Critics?
• What Does an 86% Audience Score Actually Mean for Viewers?
• The Chemistry Between Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as the Score’s Foundation
• Interpreting the 47% Critics’ Score and What It Means for Your Viewing Decision
• The Limitations of Rotten Tomatoes Scores and What They Don’t Capture
• Comparing “Anyone but You” to Recent Rom-Coms on Rotten Tomatoes
• What the Score Gap Suggests About Modern Film Criticism and Audience Taste
• Conclusion

Why Did Audiences Love “Anyone but You” So Much More Than Critics?

The 86% audience score reflects moviegoers’ enthusiasm for the film’s central appeal: the undeniable chemistry between leads Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Audiences consistently highlighted this dynamic as the film’s strongest asset, describing the pair’s interactions as genuinely charming and funny.

This chemistry-driven appreciation represents exactly what critics often overlook or undervalue when evaluating romantic comedies—the intangible connection that makes viewers invest in whether two characters end up together. For audiences, that investment paid off, and it manifested in positive reviews.

Critics, by contrast, viewed “Anyone but You” through a different lens, focusing on narrative structure, originality, and artistic execution rather than the appeal of the lead performances.

The film’s 47% critics’ score suggests reviewers found it formulaic—hitting familiar rom-com beats without reinventing the genre. However, this critical perspective misses what audiences clearly understood: that execution matters less than emotional satisfaction when it comes to feel-good entertainment.

The film’s humor also landed better with audiences than critics expected, with viewers calling it “hilarious” and praising its comedic timing. This gap between critics and audiences (39 points) is larger than typical rom-com discrepancies.

It suggests that critics and audiences were essentially rating different films—one evaluating artistic merit and narrative freshness, the other prioritizing entertainment value and emotional gratification. Understanding this distinction helps explain why “Anyone but You” found such commercial success despite middling reviews.

What Does an 86% Audience Score Actually Mean for Viewers?

An 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes indicates that roughly 4 out of 5 people who watched “Anyone but You” rated it positively (typically a score of 3.5 stars or higher on their scale).

This percentage represents genuine satisfaction rather than mere tolerance, suggesting the film delivered on what audiences expected from a romantic comedy. However, the score also includes a natural range of opinion—the remaining 14% of viewers gave it negative ratings, meaning some people walked away disappointed despite the film’s overall positive reception.

It’s important to recognize that Rotten Tomatoes scores can be influenced by selection bias. Audiences who choose to rate a film are often those with stronger opinions—either very positive or very negative.

Someone who found “Anyone but You” merely okay might skip rating it entirely, while someone who loved it or hated it is more likely to leave feedback. This means the 86% figure somewhat overstates the universal appeal, though it still indicates genuinely strong audience satisfaction.

For comparison, many widely beloved films like “Paddington 2” have audience scores in the 95%+ range, while critically panned blockbusters might score in the 60-70% range with audiences. One limitation of interpreting an 86% score is that it doesn’t tell you whether audiences loved the film or simply found it acceptable.

A viewer might rate “Anyone but You” as entertaining while recognizing its narrative shortcomings. The score is a blunt instrument—useful as a signal but insufficient on its own for deciding whether to watch.

The Chemistry Between Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as the Score’s Foundation

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s on-screen chemistry was the primary driver of “Anyone but You’s” positive audience reception. Audiences repeatedly noted that their interactions felt natural and fun, with genuine comedic timing and believable romantic tension.

This chemistry became the foundation supporting the entire film—when the leads work well together, audiences are remarkably forgiving of plot predictability or narrative convention. The 86% score essentially validates that Sweeney and Powell delivered what audiences wanted to see: two attractive, charismatic actors who seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

Powell in particular brought a comedic dimension that helped elevate the material beyond standard rom-com beats.

His delivery of jokes and his ability to play off Sweeney’s performance created moments that audiences found genuinely funny rather than merely pleasant.

This level of performance can make the difference between an audience score in the 60-70% range and one in the 80%+ range, especially in a genre where character interaction matters more than plot innovation.

The significance of this chemistry-driven appeal became evident when comparing “Anyone but You” to other recent rom-coms that failed to achieve similar audience enthusiasm. Films with weaker lead pairings often struggle to overcome formulaic plots, but strong chemistry can compensate for familiar storytelling.

However, chemistry alone has limitations—it cannot sustain a film if the humor doesn’t land or if audience expectations are dramatically mismatched with what the film delivers.

Interpreting the 47% Critics’ Score and What It Means for Your Viewing Decision

The 47% critics’ Tomatometer score places “Anyone but You” in “rotten” territory, meaning more critics disliked it than liked it. However, understanding what critics were evaluating helps put this score in context. Critics typically assess films on criteria including narrative originality, thematic depth, technical execution, and artistic vision.

By these standards, a romantic comedy that follows genre conventions fairly closely—boy meets girl, complications ensue, they end up together—will inherently score lower than films that attempt to subvert or reimagine their genres. When deciding whether to watch based on these competing scores, consider what matters most to you.

If you prioritize entertainment value, humor, and emotional satisfaction in romantic comedies, the 86% audience score is more predictive of your experience than the 47% critics’ score.

If you prefer films that bring originality, narrative complexity, or thematic ambition to the romance genre, you might find critics’ reservations more valid. This represents a genuine tradeoff: “Anyone but You” succeeds as feel-good escapism but not as groundbreaking cinema. The gap also reveals something important about film criticism as an institution.

Critics often evaluate popular entertainment through standards designed for art films, potentially undervaluing entertainment that succeeds on its own terms. Conversely, audiences sometimes overlook genuine weaknesses in storytelling or characterization because they’re entertained by surface-level appeal.

The truth about “Anyone but You” likely lies between these perspectives: it’s an entertaining rom-com with genuine strengths (chemistry, humor, pacing) and genuine weaknesses (predictability, thinness of secondary characters, reliance on tropes).

The Limitations of Rotten Tomatoes Scores and What They Don’t Capture

While an 86% audience score is genuinely informative, Rotten Tomatoes ratings have built-in limitations that affect how you should interpret them. The system reduces complex artistic judgments to binary positive/negative ratings, meaning it captures only whether someone thumbed up or thumbed down, not the nuance of their actual opinion.

Someone who rated “Anyone but You” as a solid 7/10 (entertaining but forgettable) and someone who rated it 10/10 (all-time favorite) are both counted equally as positive votes, inflating apparent consensus.

Another limitation is that Rotten Tomatoes scores reflect the people willing to rate films on the platform, who are often dedicated film fans rather than representative of the general moviegoing public.

The 86% score tells you that dedicated film fans on Rotten Tomatoes enjoyed “Anyone but You,” but it says less about how average casual viewers felt.

Additionally, scores can shift over time as more ratings accumulate, and early enthusiasm sometimes peaks before cooling as broader audiences weigh in. The 86% figure represents a snapshot rather than a final judgment. The platform also doesn’t capture why someone gave a particular rating.

An audience member might have rated “Anyone but You” positively primarily because it delivered their desired ending, despite reservations about pacing or dialogue. Another person might have rated it positively because they went with friends and enjoyed the social experience.

Rotten Tomatoes reduces all these different reasons to a single data point, which is why reading actual reviews—both critical and audience-written—provides more useful information than the score alone.

Comparing “Anyone but You” to Recent Rom-Coms on Rotten Tomatoes

To understand whether 86% is genuinely high for a romantic comedy, it’s useful to compare “Anyone but You” to recent rom-com releases. Many theatrical romantic comedies from the past five years score in the 60-75% range with audiences, making the 86% notably strong.

For example, mid-range rom-coms often achieve scores around 70%, while poorly-received entries might drop to 50% or below.

The 86% places “Anyone but You” in the upper tier of modern rom-com audience appreciation, closer to beloved standards than to mediocre efforts. However, this comparison also reveals that “Anyone but You” didn’t achieve universal audience adoration—films like “Paddington 2” (97% audience score) or other genuine crowd-pleasers reach even higher.

This places “Anyone but You” in a sweet spot: very well-liked by audiences, but not approaching the status of films that transcend their genres or appeal universally across all demographics and ages. The score reflects a successful romantic comedy that satisfied its target audience without becoming a cultural phenomenon.

What the Score Gap Suggests About Modern Film Criticism and Audience Taste

The 39-point gap between “Anyone but You’s” audience score and critics’ score reflects a broader trend in contemporary film criticism: the increasing separation between what professional critics value and what mainstream audiences enjoy.

Critics have gravitated toward evaluating films against standards of originality, innovation, and artistic risk-taking, while audiences increasingly seek entertainment, comfort, and emotional satisfaction from cinema. A romantic comedy that executes its genre well but doesn’t innovate will consistently score higher with audiences than with critics.

This gap also suggests that critics, as a group, may undervalue the skill required to execute popular entertainment effectively.

Creating chemistry between leads, landing jokes consistently, and delivering a satisfying emotional arc requires genuine talent, even if the narrative structure is familiar.

The 86% audience score validates that “Anyone but You” succeeded at this task, which critics might have overlooked while focusing on what the film didn’t attempt (subversion of genre, thematic complexity, narrative risk). Looking forward, these score gaps will likely remain common as streaming platforms and theatrical releases increasingly segment audiences.

Entertainment designed to satisfy core fan demographics (like romantic comedy enthusiasts) will continue scoring higher with audiences than with critics, while prestige projects and genre-subverting films will command critical appreciation audiences might not share.

Conclusion

“Anyone but You” achieved an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, reflecting genuine enthusiasm from viewers who appreciated the film’s chemistry between leads, comedic execution, and feel-good appeal.

This score placed the film in Certified Fresh territory despite the much lower 47% critics’ score, illustrating the contemporary divide between critical evaluation and audience satisfaction in popular cinema. The 86% indicates that the film successfully delivered what audiences wanted from a romantic comedy, even if critics felt it relied too heavily on genre convention.

When deciding whether to watch “Anyone but You,” the appropriate score to consult depends on your priorities. If you enjoy entertainment-forward romantic comedies with charming leads and consistent humor, the 86% audience score is highly predictive of your potential satisfaction.

If you prefer films that challenge genre conventions or bring thematic depth to romance, the critical reservations may resonate more strongly. Ultimately, the film’s strong audience reception represents a genuine achievement in popular entertainment, even if it doesn’t satisfy those evaluating it by different standards.

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