Probably only of interest to die hard fans of modern British romantic comedies

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2007)

It has been many a year since Peter Colt was at the height of his powers. Now though he enters Wimbledon ranked 119th in the world and even the British public have given up cheering him. Deciding to retire out of the professional game after this tournament, Peter heads to London with hopes to go out with some dignity and maybe even get some column inches. On arrival though he stumbles into the room of American pro Lizzie Bradbury while she is in the shower. After some brief flirting they meet up later and continue, having fun before finding themselves in something more serious  but how will it affect their respective tournaments.
Screened for the first time on UK terrestrial television during the 2007 Wimbledon tournament this romantic comedy had an element of the same easy scheduling that brought it to UK cinemas. In a way it is this sense of rather obvious convenience that pervades the whole affair because it is a bit like the writers have extracted elements of other British comedies and just rolled them into the British event of Wimbledon to top it all off. This painting-by-numbers approach does of course generate a reasonably OK film  just not one that really ever marks itself out as anything special. The plot sees a fairly unconvincing love affair being put as the base of a story that features a slightly more interesting (but no less predictable) rise of an Englishman making his way through the Wimbledon tournament. It pushes all the easy buttons and did produce a bit of interest for me and also the odd chuckle but nothing more than that.
The main problem for me was the fact that I never gave a toss about the central relationship  not even once. The script is one reason for this but really one has to ask why Kristen Dunst thought that it was acceptable for someone of her fame to churn out a performance that any giggling starlet would be capable of. She is all surface and she gives nothing that suggests she is playing a real person  suffice to say she has no chemistry with Bettany. Which is a real shame because Bettany is actually pretty good and brings a lot of charisma and charm to the lead role. He makes his parts of the film interesting and I quite liked him as the leading man in this sort of thing. The support cast are mostly pointless, with Lindsay, Neill, McAvoy, Favreau and others just adding name value without actually having a lot to contribute as actors, although McEnroe was a good touch.
Overall then a fairly obvious romantic comedy that doesn't offer much more than what you'd expect if you washed all the colour out of some of the better ones. Bettany's charisma does lift proceedings somewhat but there is little he can do with a poor script as his foundation and a smiley giggly sock showgirl as a co-star. One for genre fans only here.