Aubrey MaloneCan friends who become lovers preserve their friendship or are the two circumstances mutually exclusive? This was a theme that was explored to some acclaim in When Harry Met Sally. Here it acquires a somewhat different spin.
Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) is a medical student drop-out who's trying to recover from being rejected by his girlfriend. He meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party in Toronto but her boyfriend Ben (Rafe Spall) warns him away from her in no uncertain terms. One senses, however, that Chantry isn't entirely happy with Ben. (And also that Ben is a bit of an idiot.)
Will Wallace get together with her in the last reel? Without giving too much away, this derivative (and often irritating) film takes 102 minutes to tell us something it could just as easily have done in two.
It's produced and indeed is gross for a lot of the time, laced as it is with various forms of vulgarity. There's a love story trying to squeak through but more often than not itís buried under the kind of pseudo-intellectual banter one associates with know-all First Arts students who arenít quite as clued-in as they imagine.
Radcliffe waddles through the film with the air of a young man desperately trying to outgrow the mantle of Harry Potter. Surely his diminutive height would have ruled him out of this kind of role were it not for Pottermania.
The pixie-like Kazan (who bears an uncanny resemblance to the late lamented Peaches Geldof) is more interesting as Chantry but her performance rarely threatens to stray beyond that of 'Pained Indecision' creakily calibrated into the areas one should probably file under 'kooky' and 'offbeat'. Her glacial sister Nicole (Mackenzie Davis) might have been better if given centre stage. Hers is an undercooked part.
Wallace's sister Felix (Lucius Hoyos) is another sibling that goes a-begging in the movie. She's only in two scenes, one involving a horror film and the other the Heimlich manoeuvre, but they were my two favourites.
Ben's job bases him in Dublin at one point, but the Dublin scenes in the film don't really capture anything of the heartbeat of the city (Toronto fares better). I remained underwhelmed by the whole enterprise. It tries too hard to be clever. Also, its late nod towards genuine romance is hard to swallow after the raunchy nature of the foregoing.
Radcliffe is an ordinary actor whoís just turned 25. He's worth over $600 million. Why aren't 'extraordinary' actors worth that?