HOW TO MAKE LOVE LIKE AN ENGLISHMAN (Tom Vaughan). 99 minutes. Opens Friday (August 21). Rating: N
Where to watch: iTunes
Tom Vaughan’s romantic comedy trivializes so many serious issues, it should be called A Moron’s Guide To The Real World.
Richard (Pierce Brosnan), a randy Cambridge University English prof – his philandering father (Malcolm McDowell) taught him everything he knows – regularly sleeps with his students and…. What? You can’t get away with that on any campus these days, but as in Woody Allen’s Irrational Man, Vaughan and screenwriter Matthew Newman don’t seem to notice.
When Richard gets his student Kate (Jessica Alba) pregnant, he agrees, incredibly, to marry her and moves with her to California. When she leaves him and their son (an appealing Duncan Joiner) in their gorgeous seaside beach house, Kate’s sister Olivia (Salma Hayek), whom Richard has previously met, moves into the attached cabana. Richard decides to play peeping Tom – in supposedly cute ways.
Their blooming romance and Richard’s attempts to maintain his residency status make up the main plot line. The sequence where he tries to return to the U.S. via Mexico is gobsmackingly disrespectful of the dangers desperate people face trying to cross borders.
Just one more element that makes this pic so obnoxious.
