Movie reviews
Adapted from the bestselling novel by David Nicholl, the romantic drama opens with Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) engaging in drunken fumblings on the night they graduate from college in Edinburgh. The fumblings peter out, a platonic friendship is born, and the diametrically mismatched pair — she’s frumpy, bookish and socially awkward, he’s attractive, charismatic and shallow — embark on a tempestuous relationship that we, the audience, dip into every year, each time on the same date, July 15. The story may have been more artfully told in the novel, but as a movie it’s all rather flat. Virtually every development is signposted, in part because the lead characters’ development is a reverse mirror of the other: Emma evolves from ugly duckling to elegant swan, whereas Dexter squanders his early fame and fortune to become a social pariah and professional failure. Hathaway and Sturgess are individually strong in their roles: Hathaway, her misfiring accent notwithstanding, is surprisingly convincing in the part of the misfit Emma, while Sturgess oozes confidence as the feckless but likeable Dexter. Crucially, however, there’s a distinct lack of chemistry between the star-crossed pair, although this may well be due to how quickly their characters begin to change almost as soon as we meet them.
There’s very little amour fou to be had in One Day, however. No sense of the earth-tilting power of passion, thwarted or otherwise. Instead we get a clinical, contrived and slightly cynical affair that brings to mind Same Time, Next Year (1978) and When Harry Met Sally (1989), although the comparisons are likely to be unflattering.
