Starring: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode
Director: Anand Tucker (Shopgirl)
Running Time: 1 hr 41 min
Release Date: Jan. 8, 2010
Budget: $19 million
Critics’ Thumbs Up: 30%
“Adams and Goode are always watchable…” Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“…unromantic and downright despairing…” Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
While it doesn’t take any huge leaps or bounds into new romantic comedy territory, Leap Year will still be mildly entertaining for fans of the genre. The always appealing Adams plays Anna, a type A American who’s disappointed when her cardiologist beau, Jeremy, (Adam Scott) gives her diamond earrings instead of a diamond ring. So in honor of an old Irish tradition, Anna follows Jeremy to Dublin to propose on Leap Day. Naturally, however, she meets a brooding Welshman (Goode) along the way who… you guessed it…challenges her idealistic ways and lightens her up. That is of course after they bicker back forth and forth about burnt Blackberries and a cow traffic jam along a narrow country road. Leap Year’s outlandishness and predictability are indeed its worst flaws, but a stronger male lead also would have been nice. Instead of portraying Declan as charismatic and charming, Goode is just so-so. Thus, Leap Year belongs to Adams, but fortunately she succeeds in managing to turn the potentially unlikable Anna into a delightful and ultimately independent woman.
