Review of Juliet, Naked (2018) by Alan W — 17 Nov 2018

Adapted from a Nick Hornby novel by the husband and wife writers behind Sideways, Election (Jim Taylor) and The Savages (Tamara Jenkins) with Evgenia Peretz and directed by her brother Jesse (who's more of a TV director), this has a very romcom setup which the film seems to have an ambivalent relationship with, as it tries to reinvent and avoids generic conventions while adhering to its fundamental tropes.

The end result fares better at the latter than the former, so thankfully there's a decent cast to make the delivery and presentation more palatable. Rose Byrne, naturalistic and charming, plays Annie, the long suffering girlfriend of Chris O'Dowd's nerdy and obsessive Duncan (a role he has perfected in playing), who is, in a very Nick Hornby sorta way, an uber-fan of singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe, played by Ethan Hawke (more the dad in Boyhood than the priest in the recent First Reformed).

Tucker's one and only album called Juliet gives us both the film's title and the object of Duncan's obsession for the last 25 years since Tucker's mysterious disappearance then. When Annie unintentionally enters into a trans-Atlantic email correspondence with the singer, it doesnt take long before you guessed what the ending is going to be.

However, getting there proved not too painful to watch nor is it horrendously predictable and there are enough riffs and minor inversions of expectations here and there to keep this light and occasionally funny film going.

Part High Fidelity (also a Hornsby adaptation and a better film) and part Richard Curtis Britcom, it is nice and cuddly but could do with a few more sharp edges and wit, maybe, but ultimately, it's also rather forgettable.