I feel the need to stick up for Leap Year
Not because I think it's terribly good, but nor do I think it's as skin-peelingly bad as most of the critics seem to think it is. I actually rather enjoyed it, despite what I feel are deep flaws, and this is mostly due to the charm and talents of its stars, Amy Adams and Matthew Goode.
Leap Year
The main problem with this movie - perhaps the only major one - is the script. The writing team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont wrote one of my favorite modern teen movies, Can't Hardly Wait, but the last film they wrote was Made of Honor, which I refused to see on principle for the title pun and which rung as many rom-com cliche bells as this one seems to.
The cliches, however, cannot be blamed, as I think a charming script could have been salvaged from this concept, the characters, and the situations. I'm not sure why, for example, more of an effort was not made to explain the central idea of the Leap Day proposal tradition a little better. As it is, it sounds very silly that women are only allowed to propose to a man one day every four years. Here in the 21st Century, it's preposterous. But of course the tradition began in the fifth century, when it would have been unheard of for a woman to make a man a proposal of marriage. Also, part of the tradition was that if the man said no, a fine was to be paid, sometimes monetary (money for gloves) or not (a kiss). It would not have been out of line to explain at least a bit of that. Nor would it have been out of place for a little joking about why the hell the main character can't propose to her boyfriend some other day of the year, perhaps when said boyfriend has returned from his convention in Dublin, thereby saving her travel expenses and assorted disasters. Of course, then we would have had no story. I don't have anything in particular against plot contrivances, but I shouldn't feel like everything the characters do is because it says so in the script.
There are other things in the script that I feel should have been caught in the research process. For instance, our heroine Anna hires a boat to take her from Cardiff, Wales (where her plane to Dublin is rerouted) to Dublin. But there are storms and the captain insists on docking at Dingle instead - which is twice as far as Dublin. I can forgive, though, the fact that it takes three days to get from Dingle to Dublin (213 miles). Getting from point A to point B in the Irish countryside without a car probably is a bit complicated on the weekend.
Here's what else I can forgive, getting into plot now:
- Anna wearing the completely wrong clothes and shoes for her adventure. She doesn't know when she packs that it's going to be an adventure. She's going to be on a plane and riding in cabs, as far as she knows.
- The couple who hate each other having to stay the night at an inn and pretend they're married.
- The couple who hate each other being forced to kiss in front of everyone and liking it much more than they should. In the context of the scene, this works surprisingly well.
- The couple who hate each other watching each other through the shower curtain.
- The couple who hate each other being forced to share a bed. This was done particularly well, I thought. Perhaps it will get lost in the transition from big screen to DVD, but the sound work here was pretty great, and you could really feel the awareness each of them had of the other person's body being so close.
- Anna insisting that Declan go with her the rest of the way to Dublin, even though all she has to do is get on a bus and he can get on another one back to Dingle. One critic really didn't understand this, but duh - she's falling for him and wants to spend more time with him!
Here's what I can't forgive, in addition to how the tradition was handled, as well as the travel logistics:
- Anna has presumably NEVER heard the phrase "Heads I win, tails you lose."
- The ending. Is. Horrible. Not the situation. I totally buy that (even though I always LOL at these movie characters who go to another country and fall in love and it's, like, no biggie to turn their entire life upside down to be with this person they've only been around for a few days). It's just horribly written. I sat there thinking "I could have written this SO much better!" And I don't have that high an estimation of my writing abilities, but jeez. I kind of liked the idea of a not-marriage proposal. But then they turned around an sacrificed that small bit of originality to the cliche gods.
I also could not help wondering, as I delighted in the Irish "local color," shall we say, how stereotypical it all would be to an actual Irish person. I mean, how close was I to seeing a small man jump into the camera frame and trill "They're always after me Lucky Charms!"
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, this movie is occasionally very charming indeed. As I said, this is mostly due to Adams and Goode and what a great job they do selling this material. If I can, I'll put this in terms of Amy Adams' movie job. Her character does what they call staging real estate. Someone puts a house or apartment up for sale and she comes in and dresses the place up with furniture and decorations, to make it look like an actual place to live, so that the prospective buyer can see the possibilities of the space. That's what I feel like Adams and Goode do here. They - along with the director, who shot the film more than competently - came into this nothing of a script and made it into something resembling a movie. They say you can make a good movie out of a good script and a bad movie out of a good script, but you can't make a good movie out of a bad script. I'd say, though, that with the right ingredients you can make a semi-tolerable movie out of a bad script.
Rotten Tomatoes currently has this movie at a 17% freshness rating. For me, that's the score out of 100 that I'd give the script.
The movie, however, is much more like a 56%. Not great, and not something you should rush out to see in the theater, but you'd probably dig it on DVD. It would make a good entry in a Matthew Goode movie night, at the very least. :)
Leap Year
The main problem with this movie - perhaps the only major one - is the script. The writing team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont wrote one of my favorite modern teen movies, Can't Hardly Wait, but the last film they wrote was Made of Honor, which I refused to see on principle for the title pun and which rung as many rom-com cliche bells as this one seems to.
The cliches, however, cannot be blamed, as I think a charming script could have been salvaged from this concept, the characters, and the situations. I'm not sure why, for example, more of an effort was not made to explain the central idea of the Leap Day proposal tradition a little better. As it is, it sounds very silly that women are only allowed to propose to a man one day every four years. Here in the 21st Century, it's preposterous. But of course the tradition began in the fifth century, when it would have been unheard of for a woman to make a man a proposal of marriage. Also, part of the tradition was that if the man said no, a fine was to be paid, sometimes monetary (money for gloves) or not (a kiss). It would not have been out of line to explain at least a bit of that. Nor would it have been out of place for a little joking about why the hell the main character can't propose to her boyfriend some other day of the year, perhaps when said boyfriend has returned from his convention in Dublin, thereby saving her travel expenses and assorted disasters. Of course, then we would have had no story. I don't have anything in particular against plot contrivances, but I shouldn't feel like everything the characters do is because it says so in the script.
There are other things in the script that I feel should have been caught in the research process. For instance, our heroine Anna hires a boat to take her from Cardiff, Wales (where her plane to Dublin is rerouted) to Dublin. But there are storms and the captain insists on docking at Dingle instead - which is twice as far as Dublin. I can forgive, though, the fact that it takes three days to get from Dingle to Dublin (213 miles). Getting from point A to point B in the Irish countryside without a car probably is a bit complicated on the weekend.
Here's what else I can forgive, getting into plot now:
- Anna wearing the completely wrong clothes and shoes for her adventure. She doesn't know when she packs that it's going to be an adventure. She's going to be on a plane and riding in cabs, as far as she knows.
- The couple who hate each other having to stay the night at an inn and pretend they're married.
- The couple who hate each other being forced to kiss in front of everyone and liking it much more than they should. In the context of the scene, this works surprisingly well.
- The couple who hate each other watching each other through the shower curtain.
- The couple who hate each other being forced to share a bed. This was done particularly well, I thought. Perhaps it will get lost in the transition from big screen to DVD, but the sound work here was pretty great, and you could really feel the awareness each of them had of the other person's body being so close.
- Anna insisting that Declan go with her the rest of the way to Dublin, even though all she has to do is get on a bus and he can get on another one back to Dingle. One critic really didn't understand this, but duh - she's falling for him and wants to spend more time with him!
Here's what I can't forgive, in addition to how the tradition was handled, as well as the travel logistics:
- Anna has presumably NEVER heard the phrase "Heads I win, tails you lose."
- The ending. Is. Horrible. Not the situation. I totally buy that (even though I always LOL at these movie characters who go to another country and fall in love and it's, like, no biggie to turn their entire life upside down to be with this person they've only been around for a few days). It's just horribly written. I sat there thinking "I could have written this SO much better!" And I don't have that high an estimation of my writing abilities, but jeez. I kind of liked the idea of a not-marriage proposal. But then they turned around an sacrificed that small bit of originality to the cliche gods.
I also could not help wondering, as I delighted in the Irish "local color," shall we say, how stereotypical it all would be to an actual Irish person. I mean, how close was I to seeing a small man jump into the camera frame and trill "They're always after me Lucky Charms!"
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, this movie is occasionally very charming indeed. As I said, this is mostly due to Adams and Goode and what a great job they do selling this material. If I can, I'll put this in terms of Amy Adams' movie job. Her character does what they call staging real estate. Someone puts a house or apartment up for sale and she comes in and dresses the place up with furniture and decorations, to make it look like an actual place to live, so that the prospective buyer can see the possibilities of the space. That's what I feel like Adams and Goode do here. They - along with the director, who shot the film more than competently - came into this nothing of a script and made it into something resembling a movie. They say you can make a good movie out of a good script and a bad movie out of a good script, but you can't make a good movie out of a bad script. I'd say, though, that with the right ingredients you can make a semi-tolerable movie out of a bad script.
Rotten Tomatoes currently has this movie at a 17% freshness rating. For me, that's the score out of 100 that I'd give the script.
The movie, however, is much more like a 56%. Not great, and not something you should rush out to see in the theater, but you'd probably dig it on DVD. It would make a good entry in a Matthew Goode movie night, at the very least. :)