A lot of romantic comedies, especially mediocre ones, culminate in one party’s mad dash to chase the other one down in some far-flung place, or at least the airport, before it’s too late. This one uses that as the starting point. Dainty/mildly prissy Anna (Amy Adams) is tired of waiting for her longtime boyfriend (Adam Scott) to propose, and so, non-advance-purchase air fares be damned, she decides to chase him down in London, where he has to be for some conference, for like a week. However, through a series of unfortunate occurences/extraordinary contrivances, she winds up in the company of a roguish bartender (Matthew Goode), in rural Ireland. Surely anyone born since 1934, when roguish Clark Gable charmed dainty Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night opened, will not be confused about the general course of the movie.
It’s not worth recounting how screenwriting team Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, crafters of both Surviving Christmas and Maid of Honor, keep these two together for an hour and a half of screen time. (Okay, one: he takes her to a train station, but convinces her to climb a hill to see a castle, so she misses her train, despite falling down the hill in the rainy mud, ’cause she’s a klutz.) Yet their ramshackle screenplay is in the hands of a director, Anand Tucker, who has helmed such respectable efforts as Hilary and Jackie and Shopgirl. So if the dopey connecting sequences are ignored, the scenes of Adams and Goode together are often charming, sometimes funny (though overly reliant on Anna’s being a klutz), and very well acted. Nobody gets nominated for Oscars for roles in silly romantic comedies, but Goode would deserve it. (His performance as Colin Firth’s lover in A Single Man highlights his versatility.)
The other thing that makes the movie enjoyable is the gorgeously shot Irish countryside. I don’t know if Ireland’s tourist board provided a subsidy for the movie, but it should have. More than making me want to recommend the movie, it made me want to go there.
IMDB link
viewed 12/1/09 [PFS screening] at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/8/10
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