Movie Review: Leap Year

This time of year, with the weather brutal and the remaining Oscar fare depressing, we could really use a decent romantic comedy. Unfortunately no one ever takes up that challenge, instead offering easy paycheck stuff like Bride Wars or this year’s offering, Leap Year.

According to supposed Irish custom, women may propose to their reluctant boyfriends on February 29. The woman in Leap Year is Anna (Amy Adams), a Boston apartment stager, and her intended fiancé, Jeremy (Adam Scott), is a surgeon more in love with his BlackBerry than her. But after four years, he hasn’t pulled the Tiffany trigger. What’s a girl to do? Jeremy has flown to a medical conference in Dublin, which neatly coincides with Leap Day, so Anna follows — intending to ambush him on the fated date. Needless to say, things don’t go as planned. Leap Year belongs to the Prada backlash subgenre of women’s pictures — epitomized by The Proposal — in which smart, stylish women must be muddied, abased, ridiculed and degraded in order to get their man. Only the new man is waggish innkeeper Declan (Matthew Goode), who agrees to drive stranded Anna to Dublin. She’s uptight and hyper-organized; he’s a grinning oaf who chews with his mouth open. See where this is going? Adams and Goode are both appealing, but you can write Leap Year’s opposites-attract itinerary yourself.

It’s unclear what Amy Adams did to deserve “Leap Year,’’ but all that’s missing from the movie is a set of jailhouse bars over her scenes. She plays Anna, one of those uptight, over-prepared yuppies whose goals amount to engagement rings and real estate. It’s not that she looks miserable – her eyes continue to pop with bliss and her voice retains its soothing lilt. But the snobbery, blind determination, and materialism she deploys are aggravating since they have nothing to do with the Amy Adams we’ve come to know. (This is the sort of movie where her Louis Vuitton rollerbag is called by its first name.)

We’ve had Adams as a star for only about two years, but her persona seems firm: She’s exceedingly tolerant. And while a movie can bend that tolerance in a hundred different directions, very little can break it. In “Leap Year’’ Adams is required to be brittle and obnoxiously impatient. When she’s shown a room in Declan’s shabby little inn, she wrinkles her face and says, “Just like the Four Seasons.’’

But like Sarah Jessica Parker in “Did You Hear About the Morgans?,’’ Adams seems embarrassed by the confidence needed for a part like this. In the future these sorts of entitled yuppies will be played by Anna Kendrick, of “Up in the Air,’’ a woman who can be witheringly self-assured. She’s the 21st century’s answer to Rosalind Russell. When Kendrick wields a BlackBerry, she means it.

Until then, there’s Adams, who doesn’t own this character’s sense of superiority. She apologizes for it. Of course, given the material, it’s hard to blame her.

Release Date: January 8, 2010

Genre: Comedy, Romance

MPAA Rating: PG

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Anand Tucker

Screenwriter: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan

Trailer

Movie Website: LeapYearfilm.net

Actors/Actresses: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott, John Lithgow

Our Verdict:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first sucker of 2010: Anand Tucker’s overly predictable “Leap Year,” a dreadful romantic comedy that’s about as amusing as a soggy piece of toast. I generally enjoy watching both Amy Adams and Matthew Goode on the big screen, but in this train wreck, they sure look out of place.