Friday, February 3, 2006

Imagine Me & You (**1/2)


An occasionally funny, pleasant movie mostly showing that a British romantic comedy about a married woman’s lesbian crush can be just as innocuous as an American one about single heterosexuals.

I believe that what you think of this romantic comedy depends in part on your answers to three questions. First, is it likely that a thirtyish, upscale contemporary Londoner (Piper Perabo) would have spent her whole life ignorant (so far as we can tell) of her sexual inclination toward women? Second, if there was such a woman, so sheltered from her own desires, would she have no hesitation, other than concern for her spouse, about bowling from the other side of the wicket? And third, is there love at first sight? I myself am most skeptical about the last question, but the other woman in the story (Lena Headey), insists that that’s the only kind worth a farthing. Despite my misgivings, I found both women likeable enough. Yet the third character, the husband (poor Matthew Goode, also cuckolded in Match Point), seemed the best written. As you might expect from a movie named after the Turtles’ hit “Happy Together,” it’s too cute and shallow to be topnotch. It also follows an unwritten rule of mediocre romantic comedies, which is that every last character must be paired off with someone by the end, even if this requires a corny, unnecessary epilogue.

No comments:

Post a Comment