Leap Year Movie Review

Director: Anand Tucker

Writer(s): Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont

Starring: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, John Lithgow

2010 has begun and a brand new movie season is upon us. I apologize for the lack of updates lately but the holidays and a new job have kept me busy at the start of the new year here. None the less I am back and ready to provide you all with reviews of new movies and of course of ones I have seen in the past. The content of this site will grow immensely this year, and I hope you all continue to support the site.

This bring me to Leap Year which is a movie that I saw just the other evening. The movie stars Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, Enchanted) and Mathew Goode (Watchmen) in what looked as though it could have been one of the more interesting romantic comedies of 2010. The only problem is that through bad direction and a lackluster cast the movie falls short of achieving what it was capable of.

Leap Year purposes a premise of which has all the making of a good movie. Instead though the director decided it would be more rewarding for the studio to pump out more of what has already been done before. Amy Adams while showing that she is a great performer still can not add enough charm to her underwritten character to save this movie from itself. Amy Adams is heading to Ireland to purpose to her man on February 29th (Leap Year), only problem in she is going through every possible bit of bad luck in the meantime, along comes Matthew Goode, the two instantly dislike each other, only to essentially fall for each other by the end of our movie.

Now had the team behind Leap year thought this one through they would have made Amy Adams character not so stereotypical of a lost American girl trying to get to the man she loves. Instead they would have had her as a girl with a string of bad luck but is still hopelessly charming, never one to dislike, but caught up in a country that she does not quite understand. In the meantime Matthew Goode required being played by someone with better delivery of his characters lines. Some of the lines had the potential to be quite numerous while at the same time not allow the audience to dislike him either. The exact same event could have taken place, just with some better direction, and some revising of the script to a degree and I can guarantee you we would have had one of the most heart warming movies of 2010. Instead we are left with something that remind me of a bad joke, it seems alright at first but after a short while you truly wonder what there ever was to even like about.

Leap Year will fall victim to being forgotten after a couple of years. Like the toy a child plays with at first and then moves on to a newer model, this romantic comedy will never keep itself off the shelf for too very long. I recommend seeing something better and not wasting the time with this movie.

My Rating: 42%