Leap Year (Amy Adams, Matthew Goode) — The cinematography of Ireland is great. The music is good, too. What isn’t good is the movie. “Leap Year” stars Academy Award nominee Amy Adams and Brideshead Revisited and Watchman star Matthew Goode. She’s a “house stager,” the person who carts in perfect furniture and accoutrements so a house for sale looks perfect for a prospective buyer. Her boyfriend is a cardiologist who wants to live with her in an incredible apartment they’re bidding on but he’s not the marrying kind. He heads to Dublin for a medical convention, and she decides to go over there to ask him to marry her on Leap Day (presumably because that’s the only day under Irish tradition when a woman can propose to a man). How preposterous! Anyway, her flight is diverted and lands in Wales, and she needs to get to Dublin by the 29th of February. Enter the owner of a local pub (Goode) who volunteers to drive her. This is where the merry mix-up occurs. The car gets destroyed; she misses the train; then she skips the bus. All along the way, the two argue, bicker and otherwise don’t like each other. Right! Do you see where it’s going yet? (If not, you have never been to a “chick flick” or watched television.) She eventually gets to Dublin and finds her boyfriend. The rest is frightfully predictable. My wife and mother both thought the film was cute. I dozed and checked my watch several times.
I think Amy Adams was wonderful in Doubt, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Enchanted. She’s talented and cute. She can do both serious roles and light comedy. While her casting is understandable, this character is beneath her. And why did the director choose to show her in profile at least five times when the only flaw in her looks is her pointy nose? Beats me. I really liked Matthew Goode in both movies mentioned above. He is miscast here. He is an excellent serious actor; light comedy is not his thing (remember when Ralph Fiennes tried romantic comedy in Maid in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez?). Two fine actors. One throwaway movie.
Leap Year is still playing in Des Moines but, frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it.