Review: Leap Year

If you saw the trailer for Leap Year and thought, “Gee, that looks like a good movie,” then you most likely will enjoy the film. If you saw the trailer and thought, “Gee, that looks like a piece of garbage,” then most likely you will loathe the celluloid the movie is printed on and wish it would burn in a fiery disaster not unlike the one portrayed in the film Inglourious Basterds. Needless to say, I fall into the latter category.

Anna (Amy Adams) is a cute-as-a-button well-to-do apartment stager (anyone who watches HGTV knows that a stager is someone who is hired to come in and furnish a home to help the owner sell it faster) who wants to get married. Her boyfriend of four years, Jeremy (Adam Scott), is a clean-cut, pompous cardiologist who doesn’t seem interested in marriage. When Anna’s father (John Lithgow) tells her about an old Irish tradition where it’s okay for a woman to ask a man to marry her on February 29 (hence the title), Anna gets it in her head as the right thing to do. Jeremy just happens to be in Dublin for a medical conference so Anna hops on a plane and goes to ask him to marry her.

I don’t think I need to tell you events don’t go exactly as planned. First her plane is diverted to Wales due to a storm. She tries to take a ferry but, because of the storm, they’re docked. She hires a boat that drops her off in Dingle, which I discovered (yes I looked it up) after looking at a map, is on the other side of Ireland, about four hours away). Once in Dingle, Anna meets young, scruffy, pub owner Declan (Matthew Goode). He’s got a bit of an attitude towards Anna from the start (the reason why is never explained) but agrees to drive her to Dublin the next day. As this is a highly predictable and unoriginal film, I’m sure you already know what comes next.

Leap Year does have some good moments thanks to the on-screen presence of Adams and Goode, who appear to be having fun with the horrible dialogue they have to speak. Both of them aren’t enough to save it from being an utter disaster though. It’s the same, tired scenarios we’ve seen in films like The Matchmaker (1997), New in Town (2009), and Just Married (2003). Does Anna only bring high heels to walk around in? Check. What about a bunch of cows blocking the road so that someone steps in cow dung? Yup. And the car rolls away? You betcha. All these recycled gimmicks end up stretching their four-hour trip into four days.

The editing of Leap Year is also horrendous and I lost track of all the badly-timed dissolves and questionable cuts. One scene in particular, where Anna and Declan go to a castle, has some of the worst green screen and CGI effects I’ve ever seen. Director Anand Tucker’s Shopgirl (2005) suffered from similar problems, but the Steve Martin penned script (based on his book) helped save that from completely sinking. Nothing saves Leap Year.

What saddens me most is that Adams was in two of the films on my Best of 2009 list (Julie & Julia and Sunshine Cleaning) whereas Leap Year could potentially make it on my Worst of 2010 list come December. My advice for her and the rest of the cast is to fire their agents. My advice to you, the viewer, is skip this film (unless you really like the trailer).

** out of 5 stars

Rated PG
Cast: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott
Directed by: Anand Tucker
Official Site IMDb

brian.mckechnie@citynews.rogers.com

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Top image: Amy Adams and Matthew Goode in Leap Year. Courtesy Universal Pictures.