Leap Year: Cog au Vin 🥁 🥁 🥁 1/2
/Year Released: 2010"
Directed by: Anand Tucker
Starring: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode
( PG, 100 min.)
Genre: Romantic Comedy
A light diversion from a problematic world, even though this February is not an official leap year, who can resist Amy Adams or Matthew Goode, even when he plays a surly innkeeper?
A chance encounter with a dashing Irish innkeeper upends an American woman’s carefully planned trip to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend.
Again, the critics complain but the audiences give it a solid B.
Yes, it does to the Irish what the Europeans often do to Americans in their films – a rather cliched portrait. In fact, “Donald Clarke of The Irish Times gave the film one star out of five, and in a scathing review, described it as "offensive, reactionary, patronizing filth" and cited it as evidence that "Hollywood is incapable of seeing the Irish as anything but IRA men or twinkly rural imbeciles."
And even the costar, Matthew Goode chimed in with "I just know that there are a lot of people who will say it is the worst film of 2010," and revealed that the main reason he signed on to the film was so that he could work close to home and be able to see his girlfriend and newborn daughter. –John Preston
But Roger Ebert, who also broke with critics on A Walk in the Clouds, was having none of it: He gave it three out of four stars, and described Leap Year as a "full-bore, PG-rated, sweet rom-com. It sticks to the track, makes all the scheduled stops, and bears us triumphantly to the station".
I won’t bog you down with details, but there is plenty of slap stick, grubbing in cow paddies, rolling in mud, an arrogant American who is used to running things and a grumpy companion going along for the ride if it suits his purpose, a little like an off the rack version of the tailored classic, It Happened One Night .
Enjoy it as you would an juicy hamburger instead of Beef Wellington.
Or, as Amy Adams does in the film, love the Coq au Vin that Goode’s grumpy innkeeper makes from scratch with her assistance. Make sure to follow the link for the great recipe and a wonderful discussion of why a French Dish fits this Irish comedy.
(Our chef, like many of us “was hunting around for a feel good movie; I had been watching way too much of a creepy tv show and I really wanted a palette cleanser.”)
Maybe you need a palette cleanser, too.
–Kathy Borich
🥁 🥁 🥁 1/2
