Leap Year - The Most Leapable Film So Far This Year

If Leap Year is any indication of what the rest of 2010’s romantic comedies will look like, I predict DVD sitcom rentals will sell like gangbusters this year.

This is a predictable love story with a cookie-cutter formula that I imagine even a first grader could concoct given a setting, three archetypal characters, a couple of Crayons, and manila paper. Amy Adams is a Type A, well-heeled (literally and figuratively) Bostonian, named Anna, who determines to take advantage of an Irish tradition and propose to her workaholic cardiologist (be still, my heart) boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott). It’s the reasonable thing for a gal to do after being given a lousy pair of earrings instead of a coveted diamond ring after four years...

As fate would have it (and a few shrewd writers), leap year is just days away, and Anna must get to Dublin where Adam is conveniently attending a medical conference. Of course, the journey is never as easy as a smooth plane ride with free pretzels, and Anna goes through hell and high water (literal only on the latter) to make it to the rainy shores of the Emerald Isle. In the small, pastoral town of Dingle, Anna treks her way toward a pub/motel/makeshift cab service dragging her Louis Vuitton suitcase through the mud behind her. Inside she’s met with the incoherent grunts of stereotypical Irish lads merrily holding their pints of Guinness and fixing their twinkling eyes on the redheaded wayfarer. After cordially given the card of a taxi driver, she discovers the courtesy is merely a jest and that the cabbie and bartender are one in the same – a disarmingly enigmatic and masculine jack of all trades named Declan (Matthew Goode). After a calamitous night in which Anna triggers a city-wide blackout trying to charge her BlackBerry, the disgruntled pub owner offers to drive the hell-bent heroine to Dublin, but for a substantial price.

The duration of the movie consists of uninspired banter between the odd, yet destined-to-be-together couple, in which he mocks her romanticism and insults her perfectionism and she ridicules his steeliness, small-mindedness, and smells. After about an hour of obligatory hiccups and touristy stops at a bed and breakfast, traditional Irish wedding, and Medieval castle, they are given permission by the movie-making gods to fall in love, and the only plot point left to fill in is the obligatory choice Anna must make before returning stateside: unexciting, BlackBerry-addicted, doctor-boyfriend Jeremy, or rugged, spontaneous, irresistibly charming, Irish entrepreneur, Declan? (Hint: I am not a leprechaun; this is not a trick question).

Ms. Adams and Mr. Goode manage to display their talent in spite of a lackluster script, and their shared charisma is just enough to make this movie watchable. However, the producers will need more than a lucky shamrock to see Leap Year soar at the box office.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5