MOVIE REVIEW: LEAP YEAR

LEAP YEAR

Two of Seven Cows

Some movies are so formulaic, so clichéd, and so completely void of an original thought that it seems a mystery why they were ever made. For the haughty few among us that think of film as art rather than product, films like Leap Year are an affront. While on my more lucid days I am both haughty and few, I do recognize that the vast majority of moviegoers simply wish to be entertained and try to view each film with that in mind. Not every movie has to be a Zoolander – my personal benchmark for movie-making greatness.

             

All that having been said, Leap Year is wretched. It is vile. It is not good. Most of all it is to be avoided, lest we encourage the making of more of the same.

            

 Adams plays Anna who is seeing Jeremy (Adam Scott), who has failed to propose after four years of dating. Jeremy goes to Dublin on a business trip, and when Anna learns of the Irish tradition of women proposing to men on February 29 she follows. Encountering travelling difficulties she is forced to hire a driver, played by Matthew Goode, to take her the rest of the way. They have nothing in common. They squabble. They fight. 

They fall in love. Gag me.

            

 This script could have been written by my fourteen-year-old niece, except then it would have had a fighting chance at being funny. A formulaic script can be saved by some inspired humor, but there is nothing inspired in any of this. Seriously, I was able to forecast every single gag and every single twist in this plot, and I was battling the sleepies for most of it.

            

Amy Adams stole my heart as Amelia Earhart in the last Night at the Museum movie. After Julie & Julia I was ready to propose. Now, after seeing Leap Year I don’t even feel like I know her anymore. Assuming that the script was available to her prior to filming, and assuming she can read, I have to wonder what she was thinking. Is she really this callow and opportunistic?

             

There is no language or sex to speak of in Leap Year, and the only real violence is that done to my opinion of Amy Adams, so if you don’t like your children very much and absolutely must see this dreck I don’t imagine it will kill them. I just can’t imagine why you would want to. I give it two cows.