Review: ‘Leap Year’

The genre of “romantic comedy” can be a damning one — too many films struggle to find a balance in their script between romance and comedy, as it’s a difficult line to straddle. Even if that balance is achieved, it can be undermined by incongruous casting, leading men and women who lack chemistry. Like real-life relationships, the tiniest little crack in the hull can sink the entire ship.

Leap Year, the new film from Shopgirl director Anand Tucker, finds its weakness in the comedy portion of its genre. Had the film been played without laughs, strictly as a romance and an exploration of a foreign setting and culture, this would probably have been a winner. Instead, it feels the burden of romantic comedy trappings and succumbs to a plot progression that is as old as the genre itself.

Of course, it’s a tried and true formula, which means it will be adored by more than a few. But this doesn’t excuse it from being entirely dull, a retread of too many things we’ve seen before.

Leap Year centers on Amy Adams’ Anna, a young beauty who makes a living redecorating houses for real estate sales. This, apparently, is quite a profitable profession, as it allows her to jet set to Ireland in order to propose to her longtime boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott) after he blows her off.

Along the way, she encounters some major travel setbacks, and is forced to make her way toward Dublin with the help of cabbie/struggling bartender Declan (Matthew Goode). Declan is a bit of a handsome slob, butting heads with Anna. Of course, he has a hidden event looming over him from the past that makes him just the right amount of mysterious, and some romance begins to brew between the unlikely couple.

Adams is beautiful and talented as ever; she’s a star who hasn’t been given a solid role to pin her name to. Goode, perhaps best known for playing the creepy and suave Ozymandias in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, is surprisingly the best element of the film. Hailing from Devon, England, Goode’s impeccable Irish accent and charm naturally shine through his initially steely composure. At the beginning of the film, it was hard for me to see anything other than Ozymandias; by the end, he was an established leading man.

Scott doesn’t fare as well, which presents a fairly large problem for the film. His Jeremy could be a barely reined in counterpart to his irritating and arrogant character in Step Brothers. While this isn’t technically a huge problem — from the get-go, we’re supposed to know that Declan and Anna are destined to be together — wouldn’t it be more interesting for there to be an actual competition? It’s indicative of a larger problem of the film: director Tucker fails to push the script in any innovative or unique direction. Screenwriters Deborah Kaplan and  Harry Elfont have the similarly vapid Made of Honor under their belt, so this is understandable.

But why go to the theater to see something you’ve seen before, devoid of originality? Leap Year plays it so safe that none of the jokes within it dare to fly. While the leads do have a degree of chemistry, it doesn’t matter: they’re not allowed to spring a single thing forth from it.

The sole area where Tucker truly succeeds without question is in his display of the beautiful landscape of Ireland. This film certainly isn’t going to hurt the green oasis’ tourism rates, and though I didn’t enjoy watching these characters romp around there, it certainly looked like they were having fun doing so.

Author Bio: John Cooper goes to college. John Cooper loves writing pithy things about movies. Follow him on Twitter.