If only films like Leap Year would come once every four years. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar. Amy Adams is Anna, a Type-A personality who “stages” apartments and homes on the market. She decorates them to optimize sale potential. She plans and schedules everything down to a tee. She’s been dating her bland, cardiologist boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott), for the past four years, but he has yet to propose. She was hoping Jeremy would do so before a big medical conference in Dublin, but alas. During a quick visit with her dad (John Lithgow), she is reminded of an old Irish tradition where women propose to their men on Feb. 29. Oh, and in case you forgot all that, they helpfully remind you of it with a voice-over five minutes later.
Anna heads off to Ireland, but is waylaid by bad weather and finds herself in the tiny town of Dingle. Luckily for her, the town bartender, Declan (Matthew Goode), is also the local taxi driver and hotelier. Declan is a scruffy, crude, blue-collar Joe. Their road trip together takes them across the picturesque Irish countryside where Amy steps in cow poop, flops around in the mud, and gets into a bar fight. They hate each other from the get-go. Anna is disgusted by Declan’s course demeanor while he laughs at the idea of marriage. Could they possibly ever wind up together? Well, yeah, they’re in the damn poster together.
Leap Year wishes it could do the mismatched couple on a wacky road trip as good as the classic It Happened One Night. Instead, Leap Year is more than content to play up every rancid element that festers the romantic comedy today. The female leads are shrill, superficial, or uptight and they are always in need of a roughneck man to knock them down a peg. Thankfully, Leap Year isn’t as rampantly misogynistic as The Ugly Truth, but it’s mind-bogging how women still flock to these movies.
So who can we blame for this mess? Not the actors. Amy Adams is perky and likeable and does her best to work with such a lousy role. Matthew Goode is decent enough even if the Brit’s Irish accent feels inauthentic. Not John Lithgow or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olson who pop in and out so quickly that you wonder why they even bothered to show up. You could blame director Anand Tucker who helmed the superior Shopgirl. Tucker doesn’t do anything wrong per se, but he doesn’t do anything particularly memorable. He and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel do manage to capture the beautiful landscape of Ireland. However, if you want to see all that, buy a couple postcards. No, all the blame lies firmly at the feet of the writers, Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, who also brought us The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Surviving Christmas, and the equally stinky rom-com Made of Honor. The story is inane and predictable. The dialogue is flat and they desperately scrounge for comedy through lazy, unimaginative slapstick.
Made for a budget of $5 million, Duncan Jones’ Moon was a thoughtful sci-fi film and a healthy alternative to the expensive, special effects blow outs like Avatar and 2012. The same could be said of The Hurt Locker as an alternative to G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. If you want an alternative to the drivel of Leap Year, then rent (500) Days of Summer.
Rating: *
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