Last Chance Harvey (www.the-usher.com)

"I'm gonna dance your socks off"

With his daughter getting married in London, Harvey (Hoffman) had to tie up everything at work before he went or his jingle would get replaced by one composed by the young, up and coming digital musician hired to replace him. As he arrives, he discovers that his that he isn’t even staying with the wedding party and that his wife’s new husband is going to give his daughter Susan (Balaban) away. Thinking it couldn’t get much worse, he receives a call from his boss Marvin (Schiff) and tells him that his time is up and his firm are going with the younger approach. Desperate to get back to New York, Harvey heads for the airport but when he is unable to get a flight, he runs into Kate (Thompson) and the pair start a conversation.

Hollywood normally seems to think that romance is a young person’s pursuit but once in a while a movie comes along that reminds you that love in eternal.

When it comes to romantic movies, Hollywood it unwilling to show anyone over the age of fifty finding love but thankfully ‘Last Chance Harvey’ turns that on its head. British writer/director Joel Hopkins goes against convention to create a story of two lonely people, who through circumstance meet and discover a connection that neither of them would have ever expected.

The film is about a man in his early sixties. Harvey is on the verge of been replaced by a younger musician at his jingle writing firm in New York, his daughter is getting married in London and she has asked her stepfather to give her away and he isn’t even staying in the same hotel as the wedding party. Nothing is going his way and after the humiliating himself at the pre-wedding diner, he decides to head home but he didn’t expect to meet Kate. She works at the airport, is haplessly single and has an overly demanding mother but the pair hit it off. With a heavy emphasis on conversation and two people getting to know each other, you need two actors that can embody the characters and make the audience care and in Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson you have just that. The pair are a joy to watch as Harvey and Kate and their chemistry is what makes the movie all the more watchable. If you read the synopsis for the movie you could easily think that this is going to be very predictable and nothing original but the presence of these great performers mean that the movie is so much more than it should have been.

Even with the emphasis been mainly on Hoffman and Thompson, there are also good supporting performances from Kathy Baker, James Brolin, Richard Schiff, Liane Balaban and a scene stealing performance from Eileen Atkins as Kate’s mother Maggie.

‘Last Chance Harvey’ is a romantic movie that you cannot help but enjoy. With fantastic chemistry between Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, the movie is just incredibly sweet and a joy to watch. Romance is definitely not dead when you pass the age of forty and ‘Last Chance Harvey’ is very much proof of this.

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2009