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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Leap Year (2010)

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)

The Schmucks of the Irish

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

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Amy Adams and Matthew Goode are appealing enough in the new Leap Year, but the movie doesn't give them one single moment that doesn't come out of the romantic comedy rulebook; anyone who has seen more than a couple of these types of movies will be able to call each scene well in advance. Why did anyone even bother? Anna (Adams) is tired of her boyfriend of four years, Jeremy (Adam Scott), dragging his feet in the marriage department. Anna's drunken dad (John Lithgow) tells her about an old tradition: on Leap Year Day in Ireland, a girl can propose to a guy. (Although why you can't do this any day in America is not explained.) It just so happens that Jeremy is going to be in Ireland on that day on business, so Anna decides to follow him. Due to a storm, her plane goes down short of her destination and she must hire the scruffy Declan (Goode) to escort her the rest of the way. We get the requisite bickering, the many scenes in which the control freak Anna tries to navigate the countryside in her high heels, and the scene in which the couple must pretend to be married to secure lodging. Of course, the scene in which others goad the couple into kissing immediately follows. And eventually we get the scene in which Anna learns that Jeremy is really a schmuck. (It has to be an easy choice for her.) Director Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl) actually filmed in Ireland and the scenery is nice, but this is filmmaking by numbers. Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (Josie and the Pussycats) wrote the script. Rent Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) instead.

With: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott, John Lithgow, Noel O'Donovan, Tony Rohr, Pat Laffan, Alan Devlin, Ian McElhinney, Dominique McElligott, Mark O'Regan, Maggie McCarthy, Peter O'Meara, Macdara O'Fatharta, Kaitlin Olson
Written by: Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont
Directed by: Anand Tucker
MPAA Rating: PG for sensuality and language
Running Time: 97 minutes
Date: January 8, 2010