Too long and slow starting but rewarding in the end

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2006)

Slow starting and overlong, this movie lacked pace for the first hour. There was a plot building but so slow that I was starting to get bored. I liked the acting and the eye-candy (Johanssen and Rhys-Meyers) but the director could have made it move much faster. Some of the dialogue was stilted which is an unexpected weakness in a Woody Allen film. There also were several opportunities for more humour that were lost. Eventually the plot kicked off and it grabbed my attention back. The last twenty minutes and the conclusion were superb. Rhys-Meyers acting and accent also followed the same curve, at the beginning he really sounded awkward. I thought his Irish accent sounded wrong - until I realised he has a natural Irish accent. The clipped English dialogue and idioms were wrong for an Irish character. However, in the final twenty minutes he really delivered.
It is so much better when a movie starts bad but ends well than the other way round.