Leap Year (www.the-usher.com)

"Just get me to Dublin"

After four years together, Anna (Adams) thinks her partner Jeremy (Scott) is finally about to pop the question. As the two of them plan to move into a prestigious apartment building in Boston and on the eve of his business trip to Dublin, Jeremy books a table at an expensive restaurant and Anna’s friend saw he leaving a jewelry shop. Instead of the engagement ring however, he gives her a pair of diamond earrings and then has to return to work to sort a few things out before he heads to Ireland. Frustrated, Anna meets up with her father (Lithgow) and he tells her about the Irish tradition of the woman been able to propose to the man on February 29th. With three days to go until that date, Anna decides to take matters into her own hands but getting to Ireland is going to be as simple as she hoped.

High concept romantic comedies have become a stalwart of the cinema but can the simple one of ‘Leap Year’ get those romantic juices flowing?

Films set in Ireland have had a mixed reception and have painted the Emerald Isle in very different lights but ‘Leap Year’ is one that has a Hollywood view of the Irish people. Based on an Irish tradition that allows women to propose to men on February 29th during a leap year. While this is fair enough but the execution by director Anand Tucker and his creative team is dreadful.

Here we have a film set in the very Irish centric Boston and Ireland that portrays the people as always smiling and filled to be brim with clichéd accents and saying. With “Top of the Morning”, “To be sure, to be sure” ringing throughout, the Hollywood treatment of the Irish people is one that might not go down well in the streets of Boston, Dublin and the beautiful Irish countryside in which most of the movie takes place. You won’t believe how many Irish stereotypes and clichéd are used during the production of the movie, which, in some cases, could be seen as an insult.

The cast don’t help themselves either. You have to wonder what makes actors want to be in films like this, especially those of the caliber of Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. The pair make the movie far more watchable than it should have ever have been but even their presence can’t drag the movie out of the doldrums. Adam Scott is not well cast as Adams’ sweetheart Jeremy, as you wonder what she sees in him and John Lithgow is criminally underused as Anna’s father.

Filled with clichéd Irish sayings, stereotypes and a predictable plot, ‘Leap Year’ has only Amy Adams and Matthew Goode going for it. Even they can’t save this romantic comedy from been a disaster and one that only people who believe in Hollywood love will get anything out of.

On the Set of Leap Year
Deleted scenes
Trailer

The Proposal

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2010