Movie reviews

ANNE HATHAWAY’S inability to master a Yorkshire accent for more than a few syllables at a time is the least of the problems that beset One Day (12A).

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.

Treacle Jr (16s) opens with Tom (Tom Fisher) walking out of his suburban home and away from his wife and child, ostensibly to go to work. Instead, Tom proceeds to make himself homeless on the London streets, ripping up his credit cards, throwing away his wallet and sleeping rough. Almost before we can ask why, Tom gets beaten up and finds himself in an ER, where he meets Aidan (Aidan Gillen). A manic personality and non-stop talker who appears to have the mental age of a five-year-old, Aidan has dark secrets to conceal, among them a physically abusive girlfriend, Linda (Riann Steele). Written and directed by Jamie Thraves, Treacle Jr is a fitfully fascinating character study that surges to life whenever Gillen’s character appears on screen. It’s a strong double-hander from Fisher and Gillen. In fact, as the polar opposites of their characters dovetail, albeit too neatly: the taciturn, brooding and possibly suicidal Tom finds some solace in Aidan’s irrepressible optimism, with the flighty Aidan responding to Tom’s stolid sense of fair play and moral rectitude.

The film does cheat the viewer, however. Tom renounces his conventional life, yet conveniently discovers a credit card when his finances reach rock-bottom; Aidan is equal parts simpleton and victim until the story requires him to discover unsuspected reserves of intelligence and strength. Plot twists like these make the overall tale of physical and emotional squalor rather facile, undermining the convincing characterisations Gillen and Fisher work so hard to establish. That said, it’s an intriguing and ambitious piece of filmmaking, and establishes Thraves as a name to watch for in the future.

Final Destination 5 (15A) recycles that franchise’s preposterous plot as a group of people cheat death when one of their number, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), foresees the collapse of a bridge and leads them all to safety. Unimpressed and hungry for souls, Death begins to stalk the group one by one, and soon the corpses are piling up. The twist here is that Sam & Co hatch a plot to deceive Death by providing Him with other deaths to balance His ledger, but any plot at all is secondary to the relentless sequence of increasingly inventive and implausible murders. It’s all laughably ludicrous. Mind you, the ‘comedy’ offered here will appeal to a very particular sense of humour.