Fix: Irish Brogues, Romantic Comedy, Love/Hate Relationships, Brooding Irish Dude With A Heart Of Gold
Platform: Netflix
Netflix Summary:
Anna chooses February 29 to propose marriage to her boyfriend, but after meeting a charming innkeeper, she must evaluate her original plan.
FYA Summary:
Anna is a career-driven home “stager,” and is dating a cardiologist. Things are going really well — in fact, they’re going to move into a prestigious building together, and her (kind of awful) best friend just spotted Anna’s boyfriend walking out of a Very Important Jewelry Store with a Very Tiny Bag. Unfortunately, it’s not the proposal she was hoping for, and he leaves shortly thereafter to go to a convention in Dublin. Anna is blindsided, but her father reminds her of the “tradition” in Ireland in which a woman is “allowed” to propose to a man on Leap Day. So Anna sets off in the midst of a huge storm to fly to Dublin and propose to her boyfriend instead of waiting around. When things go awry, she asks a bartender/innkeeper/taxi driver to help her get to Dublin, never dreaming that it will become an even bigger comedy of errors.
Familiar Faces:
Amy Adams as Anna
Matthew Goode as Declan
Adam Scott as Jeremy
John Lithgow as Anna’s Dad
Couch-Sharing Capability: Good
This movie is best shared with someone who understands how CRIMINALLY UNDERUSED Matthew Goode was on The Good Wife. (Unfortunately, Declan, while sexy and amusing, is no Finn Polmar, he of the sad-yet-knowing looks and fine moral standing.)
Recommended Level of Inebriation: High
I liked this movie. It’s cute, and Amy Adams and Matthew Goode have some sizzling chemistry. However, I need a lot of booze to get past the whole “waiting around for my boyfriend to propose without actually telling him that I want to get married and here is my personal timeline so we can compare notes” thing, as well as the whole “allowing” a woman to propose — there are lots of implied jokes about Anna’s supposed desperation. Her boyfriend isn’t following the script that society deems paramount, so she takes matters into her own hands. That’s cool! I think women SHOULD propose if they want to! But the whole “giving” women one day every four years where they can KIND OF “save face” (but ha ha ha! Those desperate ladies, waiting to club a man over the head and drag him back to the cave and trap him with some babies FOR LIFE!)…sure, it’s just a movie, but those attitudes are fairly common. GROSS.
Get a giant bottle of Irish whiskey and let Matthew Goode’s sexy voice and piercing eyes distract you from your moral high ground. If you can get past the patriarchal crap, it’s a perfectly enertaining, if predictable, romantic comedy. Which probably sums up 90% of romantic comedies, now that I think about it.
I can’t speak to the Irish stereotypes portrayed being accurate or not (you’ll have to tell me, Irish readers!).
But seriously, Matthew Goode. *grabby hands*
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Girl’s Night In
I really enjoy romantic comedies, even though so many of them recycle the same tropes and characters. I like a movie where I can shut my brain off or have it on in the background and know that everything is going to turn out just fine. Life is hard enough in general, so why not watch pretty people do all the kissing? I like living vicariously through the sexual tension and first kisses. So in that regard, Leap Year fits the bill, even if it contains the same Ladies Are Obsessed With Getting Married schlock we hear all the time. Roll your eyes at the ridiculous parts, enjoy the rest. And DID I MENTION MATTHEW GOODE.
