The best thing I can say about Leap Year is that it was not as bad as I expected it to be. Films that open in early January are usually really, bad. Remember Bride Wars? That being said I still found the movie at times to be infuriating, especially the first 20 minutes when I literally wanted to drop kick Amy Adams’ character Anna across the room.
Adams plays a Type A apartment stager – meaning she pretties apartments about to go on the market so they get better offers. On a side note I am sick and tired of these female romantic comedy characters who start off as high strung control freaks and through the love of a man they defrost and start to let go and live life one day at a time. Enough.
Anna lives with — but is not engaged to — a cardiologist jerk who gives her status which she needs since grew up with a loser dad who lost their house. (Of course there is no mention of her mother, but I’m not going to get into that one.)
Her best friend tells her one day while trying on dresses that she saw Mr. cardiologist jerk leaving a high- brow jewelry store with a package in his hand. You know what that means! But poor Anna jumped the gun and in the package were only beautiful diamond earrings not her expected engagement ring. Whoops.
But Anna won’t be deterred. She decides to fly to Dublin where Mr. Cardiology jerk is at a conference and propose to him, because on Leap Day a woman can do that. Once every four years a woman can propose to a man. It’s beyond insulting.
Suffice it to say her journey to Dublin is fraught with turbulence — literally and figuratively — and when the plane is diverted due to a storm the one thought that crosses her mind (which unfortunately for us she says out loud) when it feels like the plane might go down is “I can’t die without getting engaged. “ My thought at that moment was please save me.
The film improves with the introduction of Matthew Goode (one of my favs) as a pub owner from a small Irish town who Anna hires to drive her to Dublin in time to make her proposal. Thus begins the typical romantic comedy relationship — they first loath each other, then only hate each other, then they discover the other one isn’t so bad, then of course, they fall head over heels for each other. Been there, done that. But it made me think that the time has come for Mr. Goode to be the lead in a film.
So watching Leap Year made me come up with my first new year’s wish to Hollywood: stop making stupid formulaic romantic comedies. People are smarter than you give us credit for.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
this movie looks boring, i have no interest to see it
this movie looks absolutely hideous and so beneath adams. smh
Every time I see the commercial for this I cringe a little.
“On a side note I am sick and tired of these female romantic comedy characters who start off as high strung control freaks and through the love of a man they defrost and start to let go and live life one day at a time.”
Here, here! Normally I love Amy Adams but she’ll only make me angry in this, it sounds like.
“People are smarter than you give us credit for.”
I wish I had that faith. With the continuing rise in popularity of inane reality shows and celebrity news seeming to bite into real news ever more I have to wonder. Cue the Sam Roberts song Where Have All the Good People Gone?
Amy Adams caught my eye back in her days of guesting on Buffy and Smallville, and it’s been a delight to watch her get the recognition she deserves.
Too bad it’s a double-edged sword, as so many gifted and charismatic young actresses have found before her. Congratulations! Everyone wants you for their leading lady! And all those leads are EXACTLY THE SAME!
I’ll be over here watching her steal Junebug, thanks. And reminding myself why I’m quite happy to remain a character actress.
Amy Adams is a wonderful actress and look how cute they look together on the poster. There are a million stories you can tell about these two people. Why do we have to hear the SAME goddamn story over and over again, about a wedding!
It sounds like it’s so bad it might be funny, especially since it seems to be partly copying It Happened One Night. I do wish, though, we could see a relationship develop over months or years rather than days. Chances of them still being together in a year? Probably not much. (I’m assuming she ends up with Goode’s character.)
Why would Amy Adams do this? More importantly, why would anyone pay to see it?
Oh, dear. If most of the film is set in Ireland, then wild horses can’t keep me away, no matter how many sexist rom-com stereotypes it contains (the movie, that is … not Ireland). Perhaps I could wait out in the foyer during the first 20 minutes.
Unfortunately, it will almost certainly contain a whole bunch of been-there-done-that Irish stereotypes as well. As I doubt that Goode will be playing an ex-IRA thug trying to turn straight, then that only leaves him to play a shy, dark-eyed charmer with a border collie.
Very touching tribute to Amy Adams’ talent by Mick LaSalle in his review of this film (which he totally pans) today. He takes Hollywood to task for the way it wastes the talents of female artists like Adams on these stupid scripts.
http://www.sfchron.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/08/MV3U1BEG85.DTL&type=printable
and more on his blog:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mlasalle/detail?blogid=38&entry_id=54886
If you want to see Amy Adams in a good rom com, rent Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. She and Frances McDormand are very entertaining together.
It’s as if they disinterred the corpse of I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING and conducted Satanic rituals with it. Must we hate the twee heroines of these pieces of crap before we’re forced to love them? Ms. Adams deserves better, and so do we. Is it no wonder Hollywood considers women a self-hating and inferior audience?
Even IT’S COMPLICATED pulled punches. I mean it had a perfect opportunity to talk about women’s self-image conflicts when Ms. Streep’s character talked about visiting the plastic surgeon with her friends, some of which obviously have had work done. I know actresses keep such details as state secrets, but there could have been at least one more honest moment in the picture that would have made up for the decorating porn and the old bitch vs. young bitch hatred.
melissa can we please have more reviews of you like this?
hilarious and true.
finally, someone’s reviews that mirror mine!
Melissa
When the time comes please do side by side comparison reviews of the upcoming cinematic gems, The Back Up Plan with Jennifer Lopez and The Baster with Jennifer Aniston. I would love to get your take on those.
uh i’m sorry but i liked this film.melissa you ‘I literally wanted to drop kick Amy Adams’ character Anna across the room.’
well maybe i’m newish to the rom com game but i thought it was cool that for whatever part of the movie you really didn’t think adam’s or goode’s character was the ‘good one’ (uh well hope you know what i mean a bit) or seemed ultra likeable.
sure by themselves you may ahve thought either was ok(maybe) but together…arrgh…
anyway i took a chance on this via the magic of a free screening and i’m glad i did. many fear/or think this film will be unfunny. well i laughed and smiled alot. but i’m sort of insane. ;)
melissa/whomever do you think this could work better for guys than the usual rom-coms ??? (whatever that is… )
well
Hey even Kate Winslet did a subpar romcom. I did not like The Holiday at all. Well maybe a bit because of Winslet and Wallach. But it seems like a lot of the actresses seem to do a ROMCOM or 2. I don’t mind and Amy Adams is engaging enough. I saw this, It wasn’t great, did not break new ground, and was a repetitive story. But she and Mathew Goode I thought were engagin on screen. And I don’t think this is any kind of trend for Adams. Well at least I hope not because then it will be a waste.
Jennifer Lopez just needs to stop making films.
Jennifer Aniston on the other hand, I think is quite talented, and I’m continuously baffled by her film choices (loved her in The Good Girl and Friends With Money).
Chris IMO I’d take Lopez over Aniston. Lopez showed real promise in both Selena and Out of Sight. Aniston plays different versions of Rachel Green. Amy Adams probably did Leap Year for the paycheck so I definitely have not given up on her. I wish she got more attention, along with Emily Blunt for Sunshine Cleaning.
Paycheck – agreed. I think it’s hard to blame these actresses for doings romcoms, because they’re just human and have mortgages and families and health care bills too, and this is their job. In this case, Adams will have shot this film before her oscar nom and agreed to do it loooong before, so it was probably more of a choice she made when she had less choices.
Aniston – I love her! I really think people don’t give her enough to do, I think her talent has largely remained untapped. She has amazing comic timing and is totally believable in drama too. She did an article – i think for empire, or maybe vogue, about how she does not-great romcoms sometimes and hopes it’s a transitional period. I think she said she did some drama and people just weren’t ready to see her like that (i’m thinking studio execs and not just audiences).
Alternative plot idea for leap year: the plane hits a pocket of turbulence and instead of thinking ‘oh my god im not engaged’ adams’ character thinks ‘oh my god this is a perfect excuse to join the mile high club – i can claim insanity due to presumed impending death’ and this results in a pregnancy that, due to it being the ‘leap day’, exists only in ‘leap day’ time ie she is pregnant once every four years for a day, resulting in a rather long incubation period. She has the child at the age of 110, and it’s the second coming of Jesus. ….just throwing that out there.
The problem I have with Jennifer Aniston is it seems like she has given in to popularity. Her performance in The Good Girl I felt was really good. I think it was her first real decent post Friends role. Since then, she’s seemed to make one romcom after another. Hey I don’t blame her. But looking at her projects for 2010 it doesn’t look any more encouraging. Part of it is I agree she’s been typecast in a way by Hollywood and it’s now difficult to get away from that. But heck it’s happened to men also. Hugh Grant has made a career of doing one romcom after another. She does have one promising project in the works that she’s producing so I guess we’ll see. And you can’t blame a girl for making a living.
Amy Adams. She’s done other things so I don’t see her locked in or typecast and she’s got other things coming up.