In the '60s, Alfred Hitchcock related this bit of Hollywood
apocrypha to François Truffaut: "There was this movie writer
who seemed to have his best ideas in the middle of the night, and when he woke
up in the morning, he never remembered them. So one day the man had a brilliant
idea. He said to himself, 'I'll put a paper and pencil beside my bed, and when I
get an idea, I'll write it down.' So he went to bed, and sure enough, in the
middle of the night he awoke with a terrific idea. He wrote it down and went
back to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, he'd forgotten the whole thing,
but all of a sudden, as he was shaving, he thought to himself, 'Oh, God, I had a
terrific idea again last night, and now I've forgotten it. But wait, I had my
paper and pencil; that's right, I wrote it down!' So he rushed into the bedroom
and picked up the note and read what he'd written: 'Boy meets girl!'"
The funny thing is, "Boy meets girl" still qualifies as an ostensibly
terrific idea, because it's still the essential stuff that best-sellers and
box-office hits are made of. David Nicholls' novel "One Day" was the "it" beach book of the summer of
2009, apparently (n.b., in 1998 this reviewer brought Ron Rosenbaum's
"Explaining Hitler" on a weeklong oceanside sojourn), and it is, essentially,
just such a story: On the evening of graduation from university ('cause this
takes place in Britain, you see), golden boy Dexter (Jim Sturgess) meets wallflower Emma (Anne Hathaway), and from there the two characters
lose and find each other, taking the better part of two decades to recognize
that they're really soul mates and to do something about it, and then...
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, although the mechanics of this
picture struck this viewer as so manifestly obvious from the second minute of
the film onward that he considers it an insult to your intelligence to call the
revelations of any particular plot points "spoilers." But what the heck, I'll
play along with convention and merely point out that the hook here is that the
story is told, as the title implies, over one day, except it's one day of the
year for over those two decades, and it's always the same day, July 15, St.
Swithin's Day, Dex points out as the dawn comes; a day cited in a famed poem
about rain, Emma adds.
The literary reference and all that it implies could fuel an argument that
beyond boy-meets-girl this is a story about life, and how precious it is, and
how we ought to treasure every moment, even with all the changes we put each
other through. And yes, it is about that ... rather tritely about that, I regret
having to say. Every July 15 scene brings a new bit of pertinent set-design, a
new pop song to signify the era (that the filmmakers did not include a song by
Oasis seems their only attempt to not make
bone-crushingly obvious choices; on the other hand, maybe they couldn't afford
the rights), and a new haircut for at least one of the characters. You can tell
that best friends Dex and Emma are finally going to at least give sleeping
together a cursory shot around the time that Emma's hair starts getting kind of
good.
This sort of blatantly sentimental and eventually tear-jerking material needs
two things to make it work: one, a director uninhibited (some might say
shameless) enough to really sell it, someone along the lines of a Leo McCarey (see 1939's "Love Affair" and/or its remake "An Affair to Remember," both of which represent
arguably better material to begin with, but you understand my point). Lone Scherfig, the tasteful, scrupulous eye behind
"An Education" is simply too careful and
deliberately understated for such a task.
The other thing is a genuinely magical lead cast. Sturgess is appealing but a
trifle amorphous, but he's not the one the onus is on here; that would be
Hathaway, who's been enchanting in other films but falls rather flat here. She
can't keep up a consistent British accent -- one minute she sounds like an SCTV
actor making fun of a bad Liverpudlian dialect, the next like Nigella Lawson --
but that's not even her main problem, which is that she just doesn't animate her
ugly-duckling-turned-swan character in any meaningful way. She lacks spark. And
without spark, there are no ... tears? Full disclosure: My screening companion,
to whom I am married, did tear up a little by the end of "One Day." Which
actually made her dislike the film a little more, in a resentful way. So there
you have it. Caveat emptor?
Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film
critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various
publications and websites, and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com.
He lives in Brooklyn.
For more movie news, follow MSN Movies on Facebook and Twitter.
In the '60s, Alfred Hitchcock related this bit of Hollywood
apocrypha to François Truffaut: "There was this movie writer
who seemed to have his best ideas in the middle of the night, and when he woke
up in the morning, he never remembered them. So one day the man had a brilliant
idea. He said to himself, 'I'll put a paper and pencil beside my bed, and when I
get an idea, I'll write it down.' So he went to bed, and sure enough, in the
middle of the night he awoke with a terrific idea. He wrote it down and went
back to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, he'd forgotten the whole thing,
but all of a sudden, as he was shaving, he thought to himself, 'Oh, God, I had a
terrific idea again last night, and now I've forgotten it. But wait, I had my
paper and pencil; that's right, I wrote it down!' So he rushed into the bedroom
and picked up the note and read what he'd written: 'Boy meets girl!'"
The funny thing is, "Boy meets girl" still qualifies as an ostensibly
terrific idea, because it's still the essential stuff that best-sellers and
box-office hits are made of. David Nicholls' novel "One Day" was the "it" beach book of the summer of
2009, apparently (n.b., in 1998 this reviewer brought Ron Rosenbaum's
"Explaining Hitler" on a weeklong oceanside sojourn), and it is, essentially,
just such a story: On the evening of graduation from university ('cause this
takes place in Britain, you see), golden boy Dexter (Jim Sturgess) meets wallflower Emma (Anne Hathaway), and from there the two characters
lose and find each other, taking the better part of two decades to recognize
that they're really soul mates and to do something about it, and then...
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, although the mechanics of this
picture struck this viewer as so manifestly obvious from the second minute of
the film onward that he considers it an insult to your intelligence to call the
revelations of any particular plot points "spoilers." But what the heck, I'll
play along with convention and merely point out that the hook here is that the
story is told, as the title implies, over one day, except it's one day of the
year for over those two decades, and it's always the same day, July 15, St.
Swithin's Day, Dex points out as the dawn comes; a day cited in a famed poem
about rain, Emma adds.
The literary reference and all that it implies could fuel an argument that
beyond boy-meets-girl this is a story about life, and how precious it is, and
how we ought to treasure every moment, even with all the changes we put each
other through. And yes, it is about that ... rather tritely about that, I regret
having to say. Every July 15 scene brings a new bit of pertinent set-design, a
new pop song to signify the era (that the filmmakers did not include a song by
Oasis seems their only attempt to not make
bone-crushingly obvious choices; on the other hand, maybe they couldn't afford
the rights), and a new haircut for at least one of the characters. You can tell
that best friends Dex and Emma are finally going to at least give sleeping
together a cursory shot around the time that Emma's hair starts getting kind of
good.
This sort of blatantly sentimental and eventually tear-jerking material needs
two things to make it work: one, a director uninhibited (some might say
shameless) enough to really sell it, someone along the lines of a Leo McCarey (see 1939's "Love Affair" and/or its remake "An Affair to Remember," both of which represent
arguably better material to begin with, but you understand my point). Lone Scherfig, the tasteful, scrupulous eye behind
"An Education" is simply too careful and
deliberately understated for such a task.
The other thing is a genuinely magical lead cast. Sturgess is appealing but a
trifle amorphous, but he's not the one the onus is on here; that would be
Hathaway, who's been enchanting in other films but falls rather flat here. She
can't keep up a consistent British accent -- one minute she sounds like an SCTV
actor making fun of a bad Liverpudlian dialect, the next like Nigella Lawson --
but that's not even her main problem, which is that she just doesn't animate her
ugly-duckling-turned-swan character in any meaningful way. She lacks spark. And
without spark, there are no ... tears? Full disclosure: My screening companion,
to whom I am married, did tear up a little by the end of "One Day." Which
actually made her dislike the film a little more, in a resentful way. So there
you have it. Caveat emptor?
Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film
critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various
publications and websites, and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com.
He lives in Brooklyn.
For more movie news, follow MSN Movies on Facebook and Twitter.
