Related News
Lack of chemistry dooms 'One Day'
By Christy Lemire |
September 11, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
MAYBE it was all more resonant, more poignant on the page: the many highs and lows and major life shifts that occur during the decades-spanning friendship/romance between Emma and Dexter in "One Day."
But on screen they feel so cursory and rushed, it's as if we're watching a filmed version of the CliffsNotes of David Nicholls' best-seller. Nicholls adapted his novel into the screenplay, and the amount of material he tries to cram in suggests he didn't know how or when to let go of his baby.
It's a handsome misfire, though, with its tasteful production design and impeccable costumes - all very British, all very safe.
The central conceit is this: Em (Anne Hathaway) and Dex (Jim Sturgess) meet after a long night of post-college graduation partying on July 15, 1988. She's middle-class, he's posh. They jump into bed but decide to remain just friends - but we all know where that's headed.
"One Day" keeps coming back to that one day, year after year, and checks in with them as they date other people, forge careers, share awkward dinners and basically wait around until the eventual July 15 when they'll be together. Hathaway is doing her jittery, frustrated comic shtick as an aspiring writer. But under the weight of an intermittent British accent, it is distracting. The frequently shirtless Sturgess, meanwhile, plays a brash television personality with a cocaine problem, which is shorthand to suggest he's vapid. Because everyone on television is vapid.
The fact they are destined for each other feels like a drudging inevitability, rather than a union that we're looking forward to witnessing. The July 15ths play like dry shortcuts to catch us up on what's happened all year: He has a new girlfriend; she has a new haircut, etc.
Big, weighty moments are thrust before us - and these should be serious hanky moments - but since the emotional groundwork hasn't been laid for them, we're not moved. We're just not there with them yet. Emma and Dexter feel more like ideas or types, rather than fleshed-out characters, and the supporting players who supposedly function in pivotal roles for them barely register, too.
More crucially, though, Hathaway and Sturgess lack the chemistry to make us yearn to see them together. They're all wrong for each other physically, tonally, logically, which only makes "One Day" feel a whole lot longer.
But on screen they feel so cursory and rushed, it's as if we're watching a filmed version of the CliffsNotes of David Nicholls' best-seller. Nicholls adapted his novel into the screenplay, and the amount of material he tries to cram in suggests he didn't know how or when to let go of his baby.
It's a handsome misfire, though, with its tasteful production design and impeccable costumes - all very British, all very safe.
The central conceit is this: Em (Anne Hathaway) and Dex (Jim Sturgess) meet after a long night of post-college graduation partying on July 15, 1988. She's middle-class, he's posh. They jump into bed but decide to remain just friends - but we all know where that's headed.
"One Day" keeps coming back to that one day, year after year, and checks in with them as they date other people, forge careers, share awkward dinners and basically wait around until the eventual July 15 when they'll be together. Hathaway is doing her jittery, frustrated comic shtick as an aspiring writer. But under the weight of an intermittent British accent, it is distracting. The frequently shirtless Sturgess, meanwhile, plays a brash television personality with a cocaine problem, which is shorthand to suggest he's vapid. Because everyone on television is vapid.
The fact they are destined for each other feels like a drudging inevitability, rather than a union that we're looking forward to witnessing. The July 15ths play like dry shortcuts to catch us up on what's happened all year: He has a new girlfriend; she has a new haircut, etc.
Big, weighty moments are thrust before us - and these should be serious hanky moments - but since the emotional groundwork hasn't been laid for them, we're not moved. We're just not there with them yet. Emma and Dexter feel more like ideas or types, rather than fleshed-out characters, and the supporting players who supposedly function in pivotal roles for them barely register, too.
More crucially, though, Hathaway and Sturgess lack the chemistry to make us yearn to see them together. They're all wrong for each other physically, tonally, logically, which only makes "One Day" feel a whole lot longer.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
