You know you've watched too many romantic comedies when you can identify scenes and plot points that have been recycled in the latest one you see. Case in point: Leap Year. Matthew Goode (Declan) plays the stubborn-Irishman-inconvenienced-by-naive-American-woman-as-they-journey-to-Dublin role quite well. Maybe because he played almost the exact same character (just change Irishman to Englishman, Dublin to Berlin) in Chasing Liberty, opposite Mandy Moore, whose character, like Amy Adams's in Leap Year, was also named Anna. As a genre, are chick flicks so lacking in originality that writers can't even come up with a different name for him to say? (Though, if people named Anna are destined to end up with Matthew Goode-esque men, I, for one, will not be complaining.)
But. Despite the overused plots, despite the unrealistic whirlwind love stories, despite the perpetuating of stereotypes, it's hard for me not to enjoy a romantic comedy, even at its most trite. And I knew I would enjoy Leap Year from the minute I saw its cutesy little trailer, because who can resist a handsome man with an accent plus the always-winsome Amy Adams? (Seriously, has she made one bad movie? I've seen several of her films, and she is one actress I would watch in anything. Which helps to explain why I wasn't even deterred by rather negative reviews of Leap Year.)
I didn't care that the trailer seemed to give away the whole movie (and I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as predictable as one might think). I didn't care that the obstacles in their journey looked ridiculous: cows in the road, a car careening backwards into a pond, a very muddy and slippery hill. I didn't care that the use of a Snow Patrol song instantly gave me the impression that I was watching a Grey's commercial. I fully expected it to be a mediocre-to-bad movie, but I knew that I was going to like it anyway. And I did. It was the perfect movie to unwind with after a round of morning Praxis II exams. (Math CK was fine, Middle School CK was... embarrassing, or at least the social studies portion was. I may consider it a miracle if I get half the questions right.)
I liked one of the questions posed by Declan to Anna a lot: If your house were on fire, and you had 60 seconds to grab something, what would you save? Now, obviously, I'd grab my brother first, but as far as material objects go, my first thought was for my laptop. Sad? I don't know. So much of my life that was once tangible is now stored in digital form: photos, videos, writings, all saved in neat little files and folders. So maybe ten years ago, I would have saved photo albums or videotapes or notebooks, but I really think I'd go for the computer nowadays. I guess it'd be a different story if I had a family heirloom like the one mentioned in the movie.
I also felt a kinship with the movie Anna, mainly because she was a stickler for plans. (Girl lacked some common sense though: she walked around everywhere in heels! Did she not pack one pair of sneakers?) I also liked that she was going after what she [thought she] wanted instead of waiting around, though apparently, she thought female empowerment in the case of marriage proposals was limited to only once every four years. In any case, I admired her perseverance throughout all the contrived obstacles.
My favorite part of the movie, though, was the brief montage of her cooking with Declan. If there's one chick flick cliche I actually wish were more common, it's the protagonists' making food together. There's something very real and relatable in these scenes: I buy the bonding that occurs over the creation and enjoyment of a meal. I do not buy the bonding that occurs over the crashing of a wedding in an Irish hailstorm.
Additionally, there are the must-pretend-to-be-married, have-to-share-a-bedroom scenes, also reminiscent of Chasing Liberty; the game-changing staged kiss in front of a demanding audience, last seen in The Proposal; and the gratuitous (but gorgeous) landscape shots of the British Isles, which also starred in Laws of Attraction, The Wedding Date (in which Amy Adams also appeared), P.S. I Love You (which, to be fair, did not fit the standard formula), and Made of Honor, to name a few.
The organized, uptight, Type-A career woman is a cliche, as played most expertly by Katherine Heigl (see: The Ugly Truth, 27 Dresses, and even Knocked Up). The prototypical male counterpart, then, is a hurt-in-the-past, tough-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside guy who gets the girl to let her hair down. The choosing between two men, too, is a tired conflict, especially when trailers and posters make it pretty clear which guy is getting the girl.
I liked one of the questions posed by Declan to Anna a lot: If your house were on fire, and you had 60 seconds to grab something, what would you save? Now, obviously, I'd grab my brother first, but as far as material objects go, my first thought was for my laptop. Sad? I don't know. So much of my life that was once tangible is now stored in digital form: photos, videos, writings, all saved in neat little files and folders. So maybe ten years ago, I would have saved photo albums or videotapes or notebooks, but I really think I'd go for the computer nowadays. I guess it'd be a different story if I had a family heirloom like the one mentioned in the movie.
I also felt a kinship with the movie Anna, mainly because she was a stickler for plans. (Girl lacked some common sense though: she walked around everywhere in heels! Did she not pack one pair of sneakers?) I also liked that she was going after what she [thought she] wanted instead of waiting around, though apparently, she thought female empowerment in the case of marriage proposals was limited to only once every four years. In any case, I admired her perseverance throughout all the contrived obstacles.
My favorite part of the movie, though, was the brief montage of her cooking with Declan. If there's one chick flick cliche I actually wish were more common, it's the protagonists' making food together. There's something very real and relatable in these scenes: I buy the bonding that occurs over the creation and enjoyment of a meal. I do not buy the bonding that occurs over the crashing of a wedding in an Irish hailstorm.
Even with all the chick flick offenses committed by Leap Year (which I gladly forgive because I just felt so darn happy at the end), the thing that irks me most about the movie's release is that it's not a leap year. And it's not even February.
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