Review of Leap Year (2010) by Chads — 10 Jan 2010

Boy gets girl, it's the rule of thumb in romantic comedy, which is why Marc Webb's "(500) Days of Summer" stands out: boy doesn't get girl, and boy, did this genre abberation hurt so good.

Hollywood should take note of this absolutely winning indie, and consider incorporating the unhappy ending, every so often, to help revive this ailing genre, made moribund by its utter predictability.

Far from being the nadir of the bunch(that honor goes to "The Ugly Truth"), the worst label you could slap on "Leap Year" is that it's "bland". As Anna(Amy Adams) and Declan(Matthew Goode) go through the motions of courtship in the same dramatic setting(Ireland) that Hillary Swank and Gerard Butler managed in "P.

S. I Love You", the moviegoer may wonder: "Haven't I seen 500, or at least, 55 versions of this same film?" Conditioned by countless rom-coms where the inevitable uniting of star-crossed lovers send droves of moviegoers home, theoretically, happy; for the jaded, those obstacles which delay the simultaneous epiphany of love among lovers just before that clinching kiss, doesn't necessarily build drama, it builds tedium.

To make a routine rom-com like "Leap Year" watchable again, some degree of doubt has to encroach on the moviegoer's expectations, in regard to the major studio-sanctioned screenplay. Does boy always have to get girl? In "(500) Days of Summer", The Smiths fan's life turned back into "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" after 500 days of "You Make My Dreams", because the screenwriter gives Summer(Zooey Deschanel) the freedom to be more than a girlfriend sentenced to impending matrimony; she gets to be the boy's antagonist.

In "Leap Year", Declan blows it, but Anna gives him a second chance, since genre requirements dictate that she do so.