Critic Reviews

A pleasingly quiet, small-scaled drama about love between strangers and siblings, solidarity between lonely Angelenos and the transformative power of kindness, Anything has much to recommend it.

I cannot count the number of reservations I had about Anything, an idea with every possibility of being a cheap publicity gimmick aimed at selling the sensational and luring the lurid. What a shock, then, to discover that Anything is anything but.

It’s easy to second-guess a scene or three in Anything. Yet this is a film that wagers you’ll put aside your doubts and open up to its gentle emotions. It’s a bit of a risk for a viewer. But I’d take it.

Early absorbs Freda’s pain into his own, and McNeil builds a delicate idyll from their defiant embrace of unexpected second chances.

McNeil’s first-time film direction is capable but his screenplay suffers from a few too many cliches.

Though both Tierney and Bomer’s characters also veer into stereotype — her uptight disapproval, his sassiness — writer-director Timothy McNeil still crafts a fairly moving tribute to the notion, as Lin-Manuel Miranda once put it, that “love is love is love.”

Anything wants to be an unconventional love story but gets distracted by other subplots, and McNeil doesn't take the time to develop what becomes the central story line. Still, it's a fine showcase for a softer side of the always excellent John Carroll Lynch.

Though the film’s heart is in the right place, writer Timothy McNeil’s directorial debut (an adaptation of his play) hits so many familiar notes that it undercuts its compassionate lead performances, in the process rendering it merely a superficial tale of unlikely amour.

Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.

Once more for the people in the back, treating anyone’s identity like a costume is offensive and dangerous to an already-marginalized group. If the filmmakers wanted the movie to have a real impact, they should have cast a transgender actress. Instead, Anything is just a yellow lily-livered mess.