Movie Review: Leap Year (2010)

Leap Year (2010) directed by Anand Tucker

Anna (Amy Adams) has been dating her boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott) for four years. She's a stager, setting up apartments or houses with furniture to make them look homey and desirable to potential buyers. She likes to plan out everything and leave nothing to luck. She's been hoping Jeremy will propose, especially since they are buying a ritzy Boston apartment together. She's so convinced that he will pop the question before his business trip to Dublin that she tells her dad (John Lithgow) and a friend who spotted Jeremy coming out of a swanky jewelers. At the fancy restaurant dinner that night, he pulls out a small box containing...earrings. She is disappointed, especially when he gets called away for work. Her dad tells her about the ancient Irish tradition where women can propose to men on February 29, which is coming up in a few days. That's how his grandparents got engaged. Anna is desperate enough to go to Ireland to take the situation into her own hands. Through traveling misadventures, she winds up in Dingle, Ireland, where she meets cantankerous pub owner Declan (Matthew Goode) who is desperate for cash and agrees to drive her to Dublin for 500 Euros. They have a lot of comic misadventures along the way. Will it lead them to fall in love, maybe, by the time they get to Dublin?

The plot is a fairly standard romantic comedy set up where the girl pines for one guy but eventually falls for a completely different guy who, at first appearance, does not seem like her type. The "opposites attract" trope plays out through the usual travel problems--missed trains, bluffing their way into a bed and breakfast by pretending to be married, cooking a meal together, crashing a wedding, etc. The comedy part has nothing that an avid movie-goer hasn't seen before, just the unbelievable premise (which a lot of the characters don't believe in either though according to wikipedia it was a real thing). The movie has no surprises to deliver. Adams's character is a little unlikeable at first but she subtly shifts into a more appealing person. The other actors do an okay job, though Lithgow is hardly in the movie, so he does not have quite enough time to flesh out his character. I found the movie mildly entertaining though probably won't watch it again unless someone else wanted to, or maybe for the next Leap Year when I've forgotten my opinion of the movie.

Mildly recommended, if you are in the mood and have a generous level of tolerance.