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Visual:		4.0
Audio:		5.0
Acting:		7.0
Writing:		3.0
Score:		4.0

Director(s):	Anand Tucker
Writer(s):	Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont
Starring:	Adam Scott • Amy Adams • John Lithgow • Matthew Goode
Genre:	Comedy • Drama • Romance
Website:	http://www.universalpictures.com/leapyear/
Release Date:	January 08, 2010
Rated:

More than one critic (or generally critical or discerning person) has spoken at length about the distinction between ‘stars’ and ‘actors’, so I’ll spare you the harangue and simply say that I don’t think being called a star is necessarily anything demeaning. There’s a certain quality to ‘stars’ that seems to magnetize attention to them, in the way that you can’t help but look at Mount Rushmore or the Pyramids, and sometimes that magnetism is the only thing that can hold a film together. Amy Adams is just such a star, and Leap Year is just such a movie. Though the film seemingly does just about everything in its power to inhibit her entertain her (which is sort of her job), Adams makes a go of it, and several hours later I’m still not sure if she saved the movie or not.

Anna (Adams) is the kind of woman that Hollywood has decided that all women can relate to; upwardly mobile, fashion-conscious, and hopelessly obsessed with pragmatism and safe choices. She has been dating Jeremy (Adam Scott) for the past four years, and has decided that it’s long past time for him to pop the question, and that she’s tired of waiting for him to do it. In obeisance of an ancient Irish rule that says that a woman can only propose to a man on February 29, she decides to follow Jeremy to a medical conference in Dublin and get the deed done there. But before she can get there, her flight is diverted by storm to Wales, and she is forced to find another way to get there. Luckily, rogue Irishman Declan (Matthew Goode) is there to take her, and provide the movie with a much-needed dose of rural Irish folksiness. At first, Anna and Declan don’t get along, what with their differing socio-economic backgrounds and opposite ideas of how problems should be resolved. But as things happen to pan out, they find that their clashing personalities actually provide instances of attraction, and fall into situations in which they are forced to pretend that they are, in fact, having a conjugal relationship with one another, and…I don’t really need to tell you where this is going, do I?

Have you ever read the very first draft of a script? I mean the very first, like the draft of Back to the Future where Marty McFly actually travels back in time in a refrigerator? If it sounds like a nerdy activity, you’re probably right, and if you’re going to peg me as a nerd for having done so, then that’s fair. But I couldn’t help but feel as if I was watching one of those scripts being played out as Leap Year was projected on a screen before me. All sorts of really basic questions were raised by the film (does Anna think that what she’s doing is romantic, or does she actually believe that this is the only way that she’ll ever get engaged?), and then ignored completely in favor of sight gags that you see coming from a mile away. Nowhere is this more evident than in the development of Anna, who has every outward appearance of being a competent professional, but also has the seemingly contradictory personal qualities of being clumsy, arrogant and occasionally kind of dumb.

The greatest contradiction, however, is the fact that she’s played by Amy Adams, who could probably make a good case for copyrighting and branding her smile and generally cheery disposition, since she seems incapable of doing anything else. Even when she’s being condescending and vain, she delivers the lines with the same intonation that she would if she was baking cookies for a bunch of boy scouts. Something similar could probably be said for Goode, who will surprise everyone who’s only seen his abysmal performance as Ozymandias in Watchmen with the amount of charm he displays.

So, do they save the movie? I’m not sure. There’s really not much of an argument that this movie makes any sense, but I can acknowledge that people see movies for different reasons. Directors talk all the time about the choices that they make (story vs. character, actor vs. visual), and audiences have their preferences to match. If you just want to watch Amy Adams for about an hour and a half (there are worse things to want), then she probably will save the movie for you, because she happens to be in it. If that won’t do it for you, then she probably won’t save the movie, and it would most likely be a waste of your time.