A British player reaching the final?,only in Hollywood!.

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2012)

With the TV having been filled over the last few days of news that,for the first time in 74 years,a British player has made it to the final of Wimbledon ,I felt that it would be a terrific time to tee-up and take a look at Woody Allen's 2005 film Match Point.About an hour after having originally planned to watch Match Point,I soon began to suspect that I would have to change my plans,due to being unable to remember where I last put the DVD!.Luckaly,as I was miserably falling to find Woody's movie,I discovered that my dad had recently picked up a charming looking Rom-Com on DVD,which I hope would help me to kick off the final day of Wimbledon with a winning shot.
The plot:
Finding himself dead on arrival for the upcoming Wimbledon tennis tournament by being right at the bottom of the world rankings,tennis player Peter Colt decides to announce that he is going to retire once the upcoming tournament has finished.Openly reviled about Peter finally deciding to hang up his racket,members of Peter's family start advising him to become a professional trainer for a recently opened,private tennis club.Heading for his first day of training at Wimbledon,Peter accidentally enters the hotel room of US Woman's tennis player Lizzie Bradbury.Trying to excuse himself from his embarrassing mistake,Lizzie instead surprises Colt by saying that she would like to see a lot more of him.Despite the constant attempts by Bradbury's dad (who is also her manager) of keeping them apart,Lizzie and Peter soon begin to go on a number of dates that give Colt an enthusiasm for tennis which he has not had in years.
View on the film:
Deciding to leave out any obnoxious moments or will they/wont they- ness,screenwriters Adam Brooks,Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin instead decide to focus on the warm,easy going,natural chemistry between Peter Colt and Lizzie Bradbury, (played by a great smooth Paul Bettany,and a kooky and grunting, (although no where near as much as the William's sisters) Kirsten Dunst) along with giving the terrific familiar faces (Bernard Lee,Robert Lindsay,Jon Favreau,a pre-Wanted James McAvoy and a US accent carrying Sam Neil) just enough material to make their appearances a joy to watch.Although the "extrem close up" shots of CGI tennis is sadly a pretty clunky gimmick,director Richard Loncraine and cinematography Darius Khondij, (who has also worked on David Fincher's Seven,and by pure chance,Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris!) make the stunningly filmed on-location Wimbledon matches the centre of the film,with Flackett cleverly deciding to use moments where Peter's very funny inner monologue's can be heard,and also not cutting the shoots every few seconds,but instead allowing the matches to have a real flow which gets more tense as Peter gets closer to being the first British player in almost 70 years to be in the final of Wimbledon.