1/8/10

Leap Year

What a delightful blend of classic road picture and romantic comedy! Remember "The Sure Thing" with John Cusack? This has many of the same elements: Two widely disparate individuals, a place they MUST reach, a time element and one catastrophe after another.

Although Amy Adams (“Enchanted” and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day") is the titular "star" of this chick flick, every female exiting the theater was talking about Matthew Goode, who continues to impress me. So far he's been an American thug in "The Lookout," a wealthy Englishman in "Match Point" and a gay American Navy officer in "A Single Man." This time he's an Irishman, authentic brogue and all!

Adams' character stages real estate for brokers' open houses in Boston; she has a keen eye for decor and makes dwellings irresistible to potential buyers or renters. She has been involved with a cardiologist for four years and finally, exasperated, decides to fly to Dublin where he is attending a medical convention. She intends to employ an old family tradition and propose marriage on the 29th of February.

Due to bad weather, she lands way off the beaten track and the rest of the movie is a chronicle of her struggles—IN HIGH HEELS!—as she tries, by hook or by crook, to get to Dublin in time to propose. Goode runs the local pub at the first wide spot in the road where she alights... dragging her Louis Vuitton luggage, trying her best to be chirpy and persuasive, while he tries to make sense of her demands. We are treated to lovely scenic shots of the Auld Sod, which she sees at first only as impedi- ments.

No cliché is overlooked and it doesn't matter: At the end, we still care about what she would save in case of a fire, if she had 60 seconds in which to decide.
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Here is a trailer:
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