Misogynistic, actually. Smarmy too

Rating: 1/10 (8 October 2005)

Well now I know it's true. And I'm sad about it. British people aren't smarter or funnier than Americans. Although a higher percentage of them might be able to spell the word "p...a...n...d...e...r".
But who were they trying to pander to? It really ticks me off to market a film as a "women's movie" when every female character over 30 ends up sad, alone, or dead.
Where to begin: Well, the Liam Niessen story was unseemly. An eleven year old boy's mother has just died, and he's left alone with his step dad, and the boy's biggest concern is "falling in love" with a classmate? I know life goes on and all that, but honestly, life doesn't go on in this way, and I don't find the practice of projecting adult thoughts into eleven year old bodies humorous or poignant.
And the bereaved husband, who is so torn up about losing his perfect wife that he can't complete her eulogy, ends the movie by falling in love with Claudia Schiffer. Perhaps this is realistic, if your wife dies, you should expect to end up with a Claudia Schiffer supermodel or her look-alike. But I don't find it charming. I find it smarmy.
And Colin Firth (40 something) is going to meet and fall in love with a beautiful Portugese cleaning woman (20 something) with whom he's never had a conversation, but first, the filmmakers have to get rid of his wife, while turning Firth into a "sympathetic" victim.
How will the filmmakers get rid of his wife so he can fall in love with a much younger woman without the audience realizing he's really just a cad? They accomplish this by having Colin Firth's British wife sleep around on him for no apparent reason in a really callous way. Then she leaves him and he's so so depressed, for about a week. He wonders why all the women he marries betray him. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it's because he falls in love with women who don't speak English and marries them?
I confess I found the actress who plays the cleaning woman to be the most charismatic in the movie. And if the rest of the movie wasn't so godawful, I might have let this storyline pass, but then, the filmmakers have to stick in cheap shots at her oh so comically peasant-like father and her horrible fat sister. Incredibly, the fat girl's own father seems to hate her, and the filmmaker seems to expect the audience to sympathize with him while he is nasty to her. Wonderful chick flick, huh?. Clearly, Love is All Around.
And Keira Knightley is so beautiful and she's all of 19 or something and she's going to marry a black man who is perfect and handsome and rich and completely incidental to the storyline. In fact, the perfect black man isn't important at all, except to signify that Keira Knightley is funky and liberal and has something to her besides her looks. Because we neither know nor care about anything else about her. She's young, she's beautiful, she has an overbite, she's going to be married. She might as well be Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride.
Laura Linney's story is actually touching. And she acts it well. She's got to care for her brother, who's mentally ill. But he lives in a HOME! Why should this prevent her from having a relationship? Probably, because she's over 30. Again, if this were the only story about a 30 something woman ending up alone, through her own fault, I'd buy it. But it's the confluence of all these anti-women story lines that I just can't take.
Poor Emma Thomson and Alan Rickman work to save this movie. It's not unrealistic to think of an older bossman bonking the young female help. I don't mind this storyline, but...again...it's a little hard to see the witty and wise Emma ending up in a compromise of a marriage, while Liam Niesan's character ends up with Claudia Schiffer.
Bill Nighy does best with his role as a star performer who puts out a cheesy single, promotes it shamelessly, and has the grace to prove his loyalty to his manager, rather than going out to a fashionable party. Good thing his manager was a fat 40 something man instead of a slim 30 something female, or he'd have been left alone in the cold too.
I am a fan of Four Weddings and a Funeral despite the fact that Andie MacDowell couldn't keep up with the British cast, but with this new effort I am officially giving up on light British "romantic" comedies. I prefer the boys in the American Pie series to the cads in this movie, and the caddish screenwriters and producers who dared to market this film as a feel good fantasy for women.