Leap Year

Director: Anand Tucker
Writers: Simon Beaufoy, Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
Starring: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode
Release Date: January 8, 2009
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Every great actress has a dud once in a while, especially a few years after her career has taken off. In 2007, Amy Adams was recognized for her bubbly, enjoyable performance in Enchanted, and ever since then she has been in great movies nonstop, for e.g. Doubt, Sunshine Cleaning, Julie and Julia. After these great films, Adams was due to hit a speed bump in her career. That speed bump is Leap Year. Adams plays Anna Brady, a woman living her completely perfect life in Boston with her boyfriend Jeremy. When Anna thinks Jeremy is going to propose and he gives her earrings in a small box instead, Anna follows him to his work trip in Dublin, where she plans to propose in the Irish tradition where a woman proposes on Leap Day. When Anna is on the flight to Ireland, her plane is diverted to Wales and soon after that, every possible disaster you could think of happens to Anna, leaving her further and further away from Dublin, where she will propose. When she arrives at an Inn, in a small Irish town, she meets the handsome bartender Decklin (Matthew Goode).  He offers to drive her to Dublin, but on the way Anna starts to change her mind about proposing to her boyfriend after all – I wonder why. Leap Year has about every cliché you could think of, thrown in with some bad dialogue, unrealistic situations, and lots and lots of dramatic rain. Amy Adams and Matthew Goode share a good chemistry, and despite them both putting in their best efforts as good actors, they were taken over by the monstrous, evil script the audience had to unfortunately be subjected to. I can’t decide whether I feel worse for the actors who have to speak those lines, or the audience who has to listen to them. Teenage girls might find it cute and romantic, but otherwise I can’t think of any other sane being who would enjoy this movie.