Blogathon 8/13 Film review!

The latest British film to attempt to ride on the ‘Four Weddings And A Funeral’ bandwagon (the poster carries the wording ‘From the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually) has hit the cinema.

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‘I Give It A Year’ opened today to what has been (despite the exuberant quotes on the poster) mixed reviews.

 

Without giving too much of the plot away, the central theme revolves around the story of a pair of people who met, fell in love and got married inside seven months.

 

The film tracks their lives from their wedding day to their first wedding anniversary.

The cast has a good go at it.

I find the two leads, Josh (Rafe Spall) and Nat (Rose Byrne) quite sweet, but I didn’t really engage with the characters they played.

Ironically the two main supports, Chloe (Anna Farris) and Guy (Simon Baker) do a more convincing job and had me believing in their characters without great effort.

Let’s be clear.

Although ‘I Give It A Year’ has a few engaging problems, it is not a bad film. It is an above average film.

I laughed 13 times, had 8 chuckles and cringed at one awful cliché which was re-dressed and played back to us in the end titles and yes, I laughed at that too.

But there is, at its heart, a big emotional vacuum.

The only people I cared about were the two supports. The two protagonists were nice enough, but they were just nice.

So although ‘I Give It A Year’ is an above average film it is no Bridget Jones. It is no Love Actually. And, to end the lineage, this film is no Four Weddings And A Funeral.

But it is fun. The laugh ratio is high (but should have been higher). The cringe ration is acceptable.

And Anna Farris is, in her underwear, very easy on the eye.

It’s also worth seeing because the beguiling Minnie Driver is in it.

I’ve given the score of this a lot of thought and, in the end, decided to give this a slightly higher ranking than it should deserve, and this comes after reviewing the laugh count the the performance from the two supports.

If the two leads had been allowed to shine in the same way, this could easily have been an 8/10 or possibly a 9/10, but…

I Give It A Year: 7/10
(worth watching)

2 thoughts on “Blogathon 8/13 Film review!

  1. Have you noticed how every new British comedy that comes out, is quoted as being “The Funniest British Film In Years”?
    I’ve seen the trailers showing Stephen Merchant doing his excruciating Best Man’s speech, and that looked quite funny. But I’ll probably wait till it comes out on DVD.

    1. The beauty about Four Weddings was that the skillful writing crossed social boundaries and made the viewer invest in the characters. I haven’t found anything else (apart from another Curtis vehicle, Love Actually!) capable of this.

      Stephen Merchant does a good job in I Give It A Year. He plays Stephen Merchant with convincing ease.

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