‘Leap Year’ review

Before ‘Leap Year’, Amy Adams had never been in a bad film. Sure, the parts ‘Julie and Julia’ starring her sucked, but the half with Meryl Streep was exceptional enough to lift it up. Sure ‘Underdog’ was an epic fest of crap, but she technically only voiced a character, and didn’t fully appear in it. But ergo; all good things (and in this case, streaks) must end. ‘Leap Year’ is the first movie of the new decade, and I hope it’s not a good indication of the films to come this year. It’s charmless, humorless, and inept in every possible way. It has no shame in stealing entire scenes from other films (The Proposal, PS I Love You, etc.) It has no shame in depicting Irish folk as either thieves or drunks, and has no shame in painting women as uptight shrews that eschew logic and emotion simply because they are “on a schedule”.

Adams plays Anna, an uptight business-woman-that-worships-her-Blackberry-type-cliche who always needs things according to “plan”. When her surgeon-bland-schmuck-boyfriend goes to Dublin, Anna follows him to propose to him. See, there’s a tradition in Ireland, that allows a woman to propose to a man, so long as it falls on “Leap Day”, February 29. Her flight to Dublin is grounded in Wales, so she hires an easy-going Irish inn-keeper, Declan, to drive her to Dublin. Along the way, he realizes (as is customary for romantic comedies) that she likes the man that’s her polar-opposite - the charming Irish dude!

The film borders on sexism - having an uptight, unlikable, boring woman as a protagonist. The movie doesn’t have characters, but archetypes: The laid-back man, the upper-class woman, the arrogant jerk that the upper-class woman must be romantically involved with. No aspect of the film approaches originality; it somehow manages to make the lively Irish countryside seem dull. I’ve already said this, but allow me to stress it: If there’s an Irishman in the film, he’s a drunk or a thief.

Amy Adams, I ask you: why? Why bother showing your face in a film so insipid? Money, probably. The first film of 2010, and also the worst.

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