In
a way, Josh and Nat are perfect for each, because it would be a crying shame if
a healthy person were attached to such whiny, self-absorbed tools. She is a hard-charging professional. He is a slacker would-be novelist. Despite their differences, they will knuckle
down and try to power through the first 365 of their marriage in Dan Mazer’s I Give it a Year (trailer here), which opens
today in New York.
In
the opening montage viewers see how spectacularly cinematic their courtship
was, helping us to suspend our disbelief these two could ever be a couple. However, as soon as they day “I do,”
everything else seems to say: “you shouldn’t have.” Soon, Josh is pining for his former girlfriend
Chloe, who is trying to make a go of the platonic best friend thing. Meanwhile, Nat is swooning over her new rich
American client, Guy. The once happy
couple will bicker like grumpy old men, while steadfastly denying their
attraction to other people. Yet, they
soldier on, perhaps because so many of their friends and family never thought
they would make.
Frankly,
IGIAY would have been more fun if it
had been less about Nat, Josh, and their respective rivals, focusing more on
the folks in their calling circle. Both
Stephen Merchant and Minnie Driver supply the lion’s share of the laughs as
Josh’s wildly inappropriate best friend Danny and Nat’s tart tongued sister.
Their energy and sharp delivery are certainly welcomed, but it makes the
blandness of the primary and secondary leads (the mix-and-match Rose Byrne,
Rafe Spall, Anna Farris, and Simon Baker) all the more conspicuous. Unfortunately, the same Olivia Colman who was
so powerful in Broadchurch and Tyrannosaur is also terribly shticky as their
ill-tempered marriage counselor.
IGIAY seems to think
of itself as the British equivalent of Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips movies,
freely blending rom-com elements with liberal samplings of naughty humor. Unfortunately, the results play more like a
collection of hand-me-down gags rather than parody or pastiche. Awkward threesome sequence—it’s in there.
