Starring: Rafe Spall, Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Anna Faris, Minnie Driver, Jason Flemyng, Stephen Merchant
Director: Dan Mazer
Running time: 97 minutes
Released by: StudioCanal
Out: 8th February
Josh (Spall) and Nat (Byrne) meet, fall in love and quickly decide to get married. Their friends raise a few eyebrows, mutter about 'rushing into things' but are generally supportive and always happy to attend a good party. Can this blessed union work out?
Nine months on... and perhaps the couple should have listened. They're now at marriage-guidance and trying to work out whether to stay together or not. Into Nat's high-end life-style comes a slick American client Guy (Baker) and Josh reconnects with old-flame and environmental activist Chloe (Faris). Are Nat and Josh with the right people or do they need to call it a day?
There are few genres out there that divide audiences more than rom-coms. Somewhat flippantly (and wrongly) labelled 'chick-flicks' they are tricky-beasts - varying in quality but often, by necessity, playing a well-trodden formula to a knowing demographic. Judged individually, as they should be, each entry probably relies more on the chosen cast than the originality of plot.
So perhaps we should at least applaud the fact that the makers of I Give it a Year approached the 'romantic comedy' from a different perspective, tracing not a 'growing love affair' but a possible 'falling-out of love affair' as their template.
"Yeah, I sort of wanted to do something that was a reaction to the traditional route of British romantic comedies and they all felt very familiar," director Dan Mather (writer of Borat, Bruno, Ali G etc) told us at a recent screening of the film. " Every script I ever did it was like, ‘Can’t you just make it more of a romcom? Just make it a bit more traditional and a bit more nice’. And I thought it would be nice to have my cake and eat it in a certain way and do an anti-rom-com but one that didn’t feel too sort of bitter and cruel compared to my bitter, cruel personality..."
Sadly this reversed-Richard-Curtis-esque endeavour must have sounded more original on paper than the result, because what we see is not the 'anti-rom-com' as advertised, but something that isn't hard enough for the cynic, not emotive enough for the romantic and not consistently funny enough for the laughter-seeker..
It's hard to put a finger on exactly why it doesn't come together. The cast are proven performers giving it their all. The script has some moments that should work and some of the situations should be innately sympathetic, but somehow, something goes horribly wrong in the mix and ultimately the whole package is delivered with such a massive lack of subtlety that it often feels like you're being hit over the head with an awkwardly updated 70s sitcom rather than having your humerus tickled. The result isn't irony, it's ambivalence... we don't care enough about anyone. It's not 'bad', it just veers from crude to corny with as much lack of certainty and conviction as the couple at the heart of the story.
A prime example is the Best Man's speech delivered by Stephen Merchant's Danny. The speech goes on far too long and what's meant to be an obliviously tactless character simply becomes moronic, mean and bullying to the extent that - as the film goes on - we're not laughing with him or at him, but aching to punch the character in his smug little face. If this was on television, this alone would have you reaching for the remote-control.
Perhaps the direction (it's hard not to feel Mazer's cynicism about love seeping through the celluloid) or simple miscasting IS to blame because this is a film that somehow makes Anna Faris look dowdy, The Mentalist's Simon Baker seem bland and Rafe Spall act like Hugh Grant on a coffee-bender. Despite the odd moments of fun, they've all been SO much better elsewhere...but here they mostly fail to convince. (Ironically, supporting players Minnie Driver and Jason Flemyng probably get the superior zingers in their much more limited screen-time...)
For a film that's supposed to be about finding your soul-mate, this all feels like a fleeting fumble rather than destiny and the film ends up missing that essential ingredient needed - heart. I Give it a Year is simply not the sum of its disparate parts. I'd give it a miss.
6/10
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