Leap Year [Universal Pictures]

Column: The Word on DVDs | Date Published: Tuesday, 9 November 10 | Author: Melissa Wellham | 2 years, 6 months ago

Leap Year is a lacklustre attempt at a romantic comedy. So what else is new?

Anna Brady (Amy Adams) wants the perfect life, so when her cardiologist boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott), doesn’t propose to her on their four year anniversary, she decides to surprise him on a business trip to Dublin – and propose herself. Of course, a woman being so forward and forthright about her feelings couldn’t possibly be an everyday occurrence. Such presumptuous behaviour is only allowed because her beau will be in Dublin on the 29^th of February – it’s a leap year – and Irish tradition dictates that on this day a woman may propose to a man. Of course, the course of true love never did run smooth, and Anna finds herself road-tripping with the cynical, scruffy Declan (Matthew Goode), and sparks fly.

Adams is, as usual, cute as a button. Goode has that whole scruffy charm thing going on. The two of them have natural screen chemistry, and their bickering is believable. Plus, there are those beautiful Irish landscapes as a backdrop. But the script is such a complete and utter travesty that even the forces of Adams, Goode and the entirety of Ireland combined can’t save it. The plot is predictable, the romance trite, and the slapstick “comedic” moments in the film could only be called as such if the word is placed in quotation marks.

With a couple of deleted scenes on the DVD – and trust me, they were deleted for a reason – there isn’t any reason to rent Leap Year, let alone buy it. Although the day this film is named after is supposed to be something special, the film Leap Year certainly isn’t. It’s just another charmless, harmless non-event.

	Get Him To The Greek [Universal]: Russell Brand makes an unlikely movie star. An ex-junkie with an outrageous wit, enviable command over vocabulary to back it up and a string of scandals (the heroin years, the infamous BBC Radio sacking, the profligate shagging) who never really acts, more so just plays a variation of himself. In Get Him To The Greek he’s turned a supporting character role in a marginal bromance comedy caper (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) into the star attraction. Washed up rocker Aldous Snow (possibly some sort of self-congratulatory knowing riff about the doors of perception and cocaine) was a carnal force of nature in Forgetting… and this time the only way forward is more: more drugs, more debauchery, more uncomfortable situations, more everything. Except laughs. A & R man Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) convinces his boss Sergio Roma (Sean Coombs) that to reverse the fortunes of his ailing record company they should put on a 10^th anniversary show celebrating one of Snow’s more famous performances. Green is dispatched to England to get Snow to the Greek Theatre in three days time. Cue drug and sex fuelled mania; AKA a standard Brand weekend circa 2003. The good things first. Sean Coombs as the head of Pinnacle Records reverses over a decade’s worth of annoying pouting – he’s fantastic, displaying an assured sense of comic timing few would have credited him with. Rose Byrne as Snow’s girlfriend steals the movie with a gloriously louche, leg-splitting performance on live TV. The African Child clip – an uproarious Live Aid spoof – is pitch-perfect. Unfortunately the rest of the film is repugnant drivel. Green adores Snow and goes to any length to enable his hero – smuggling drugs up his arse, letting him screw his girlfriend, sending him out to score him smack. What a chortle. There’s never any recompense – just a rock star being a prick and an all-forgiving crony. This isn’t a clever satire of out of control celebrities. It’s a muddle-headed 90 minute excuse for asshole addicts.
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	The Crazies [Roadshow]: Hollywood’s being eating itself for generations. It’s not a startlingly new trend for brain-dead producers to stumble across an old film and think that it deserves a remake; only with more explosions and nudity. Hell, Hitchcock even went to the trouble of remaking his own films. Horror films have been enjoying – if that’s the right word – a particularly fertile period of remakes, re-imaginings and reboots (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Elm Street et al) and drilling down even further you have the films of George A Romero; the most famous of all horror directors. Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Romero’s 1978 masterpiece Dawn of the Dead was an achievement in that it didn’t overly piss on the grave of its source material. Since then Romero himself has added another three films to the Dead canon, with diminishing returns. The Crazies is one of Romero’s lesser known films but one that adheres strictly to the goofy-spectacled director’s roll call of mandatory tropes; (i) rural town Middle America peopled by God-fearing innocents who succumb to (ii) a shady government cover up of an unknown disaster leading to (iii) out of control infected inhabitants pursuing a (iv) plucky group of survivors, one of which will surely be (v) pregnant, another of which will undoubtedly (vi) get infected by the unknown virus and take a bullet, all the while (vii) lawlessness and gallons of blood ensue. Of course the metaphor of an out of control military freely executing citizens is, sadly, becoming universal (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan… take your pick) and whilst obvious, it isn’t necessarily ham-fisted. Tim Olyphant (Deadwood, Justified) is excellent as the uptight town Sheriff and Joe Anderson (Control) channels southern hick extraordinarily well for an English toff and I’m pretty sure Romero himself made a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ cameo. The Crazies is a solid, if graciously slow, film blessed with some well balanced and expressive cinematography of big sky country and one of the better remakes on offer.
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