Very good!

Rating: Null/10 (28 July 1999)

I saw this at the Leicester Odeon, London, last June. The montage pieces are striking - starting with the titles, then on with the dolly bit in the private garden, then the unexpected season-lapse tracking shot down Portobello, ending with the dolly on the now seemingly diegetically absent couple sitting on the bench. The use of found music in such passages seems pertinent because the effect is unashamedly slick and derivative. It is the world of the unattainable - the life of a screen star. And it doesn't purport to be anything 'up to date' - as it would happen with an Antonia Bird montage, for instance - because the world we are dealing in is exactly old hat (and that is the reason for the montages being there in the first place). It was courageous, in my opinion, to have such long takes. As far as Panavision comedies with Julia Roberts go, this doesn't have the same flow and exquisite close up composition of "My best friend's wedding", but its charm lies in the longueurs, in the intensity that the protracted shots and repeated situations eventually manage to convey.