Missed her legs.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
When the lovers finally reconcile and kiss, usually in the last sequence with a romantic backdrop such as the Irish Sea, I'm as happy as the theatergoer next to me. However, after that rush of romance, I need to evaluate the film, and that's where Leap Year leaves me grumpy.
Amy Adams and Matthew Goode are as attractive as contemporary stars can be, she as the young nun in Doubt and he as the lover in A Single Man. In Leap Year they are barely tolerable with nothing witty to say and a plot you can see coming always the way from Wales.
Adams is traveling to Dublin to be there on Leap Year's February 29 to propose to her love, a cardiologist we are reminded several times, played with smarmy delight by Adam Scott. Into the accidents that happen to impede her journey comes Goode as a local pub owner agreeing to drive her to the capitol. If you can write the rest of the story, you will win no prize but only a question from me about how you know your romcoms so well. Or we can wonder how Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Capra's It Happened One Night have a superior road trip--always the writing, Baby!
It's all predictable and nary a witty line in the whole trite story. The castle with the romantic melody behind is nice, the coast gorgeous, and the local Irish characters now and then amusing, but not laugh worthy. In all I wish comedies like this could participate in Leap Year by not appearing more than once every four years. But, alas, they come each year in the dead zone of January to May.
Adams' character says her best feature are her legs; this movie is so bad I missed them, and I'm sure not going back to check 'em out.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com