An odd duck of a movie

Rating: 6/10 (11 September 2006)

Peter (Paul Bettany) is a mid-level tennis play about to retire. He meets Lizzie (Kirsten Dunst), a major tennis star, when both are at Wimbledon.
I only watched this because I somehow got the impression it was written by Richard Curtis. It was apparently written by someone who is a fan of Richard Curtis, and perhaps I read a review that mentioned a similarity.
Wimbledon is an odd duck of a movie, in that it seems not to understand romantic comedies. Which is really very odd because there are so many of them, and they're not actually that hard to understand. In a romantic comedy, boy meets girl (except in gay romantic comedies, in which either girl meets girl or boy meets boybut I digress), something keeps boy and girl apart, and after overcoming some comedic adversity, boy and girl get together.
This isn't rocket science, so screwing it up is sort of unforgivable.
In Wimbledon, boy meets girl, and nothing much keeps them apart. Thus they go through the motions of romantic comedy without anything all that interesting going on. Some of the romance is quite charming, and Paul Bettany is just tons of disarming, and there's some sexy, but that's about that.
It may be that the movie is going for more of a sports underdog story, which obviously it has going for it, but again, not that interesting. A little bit of fun there, a little bit of Go Peter! but nothing to write home about.