ONE DAY (Lone Scherfig). 108 minutes. Opens Friday (August 19). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
One Day doesn’t quite work, but there are some affecting moments in this adaptation of David Nicholls’s clever gimmick of a romantic bestseller.
Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) drunkenly stumble into bed after graduation from their Edinburgh university, and on the same day for the next 19 years we check in on them as their personal and professional lives rise or fall and they do or don’t acknowledge their attraction to each other.
Think When Harry Met Sally meets Same Time, Next Year.
Director Lone Scherfig (An Education) and Nicholls, who wrote the unsubtle screenplay, don’t let us work very hard to figure things out, and the characters feel awfully thin: Emma’s early left-leaning views quickly disappear, and the UK seems to go through no political or social changes over two decades.
We’re left with clichéd arcs about Dex’s drug-addled life as a womanizing, shallow TV presenter and aspiring writer Em’s quiet desperation while waiting for Dex to notice her, all played out to Rachel Portman’s lilting, melancholic score.
Sturgess handles the showier role with an angry, unpredictable edge, while Hathaway, accent mostly in check, suffers stoically through a series of bad haircuts, sarcastic one-liners and the odd unreadable line.
Speaking of haircuts, the aging process is done effectively, but everything seems focused on hair, face and wardrobe. I know actors want to look good, but it’s pretty unlikely that over two decades there’d be no noticeable weight changes.
