Film Review: “One Day”

OUT OF 4

Director Lone Scherfig has shown us what she can do with exceptionally entertaining and engaging material such as “Italian for Beginners’” and “An Education”. “One Day”, her latest film adapted from David Nicholl’s best selling novel, however, is an abject failure. Anne Hathaway plays Emma Morley and Jim Sturgess is Dexter Mayhew in a contrived and tedious affair which relies on these two mismatched lovers meeting on the same day each year starting with July 15th 1988 their college graduation date.  As this repetitive structure of 20 years wears you down, year after year, you feel like you’re in a bad high school class awaiting the bell to free you from the mental tyranny of a boring teacher. We watch as typewriters are replaced by computers and land-lines become mobile but the emotional resonance of the two lead characters fizzles like an open soda bottle losing its carbonation. We watch Emma perform menial tasks in a Mexican restaurant in London and Dexter philandering with attractive young women while assuming the role of a TV host described by a Murdoch publication as “the most annoying man on the telly”.  Eventually something happens which puts an end to this structural nightmare.  This unsatisfying and tear-jerker of a film is verbose and stultifying.

Enter at your own risk.

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