Leap Year *1/2
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Is it worth $10? No
"Leap Year" is a terrible romantic comedy centered on a pseudo-holiday gimmick that's as dumb as the people who believe in it. Irish legend says that on Leap Year day, the quadrennial Feb. 29, women are allowed to propose to their boyfriends. This is good to know, because here I was thinking that in 2009, after suffrage and the fight for equal rights, women weren't allowed to take initiative and propose any time they see fit.
The bogus tradition is just the beginning of this movie's problems. Director Anand Tucker and writers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont have gone to great lengths to make their main character, alpha-girl go-getter Anna (Amy Adams), an intelligent person who makes rational decisions. Her job is to stage apartments for realtors to show, and she's very good at it. Her boyfriend of four years is Jeremy (Adam Scott), a cardiologist who's travelling to Dublin for a medical conference.
Inspired by her drunken loon father (John Lithgow), the Irish Anna tries to travel from Boston to Dublin to propose to Jeremy on Leap Year day, but bad weather forces her to the scenic countryside. There she meets the standard local droolers, including a lowly bartender named Declan (Matthew Goode), who refuses to shave.
Let me tell you about Declan. He doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, he has a boulder. He's not cute, smart, intelligent, charming or interesting. Anna hates him at first, of course, but as they travel together to Dublin they grow closer, even though he looks like he smells like cigarettes. He has nothing to offer Anna besides an occasional wise-ass remark and (likely) bad breath, and yet she falls for him. Why? Because he defends her honor! He shows a sensitive side! He's everything she's always wanted, but didn't know she needed! Yeah, right. All this after knowing him for three this-movie-sucks days.
There's an occasional cute moment, such as when Anna inadvertently blows the fuse on an entire village, but the comedy mostly clunks. Worse, Adams and Goode have zero chemistry, meaning not only do the characters not belong together, but the actors also apparently know this script has nothing going for it. Adams is incredibly talented, and still one of the best actresses we have today, but this crap is below her, and she should've known better.
I'm well aware many romantic comedies follow a similar premise, but that doesn't mean a movie that's trying to be realistic can get away with being completely unbelievable. Love may be funny and irrational, but falling in love after three days with someone who's completely different from you, and giving up a pretty good catch in Jeremy in the process, is idiotic. But fine. If the intelligent Anna, who seems to genuinely enjoy her job and living in the U.S., wants to give it all up for this cretin, more power to her. I hope they have a miserable life together.
Did you know?
Including the sequences set in Boston, the film was shot entirely on location in Ireland.
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