The Accidental Husband (starring Uma Thurman)

From time to time I check Amazon’s recommendations, read reviews, and - if I think I’d like a book or DVD - add it to my wishlist. I do this more with films than I do with books, since I know already which authors I like. I think Amazon probably makes recommendations based partly on genre, and partly on actors. This one has Colin Firth as one of the main three characters, and I’ve certainly liked other films where he takes a major role.

So I put it on my wishlist, and was given it, along with some other DVDs, for Christmas. We decided to watch it a couple of days later.

The star of ‘The Accidental Husband’ is Uma Thurman, an actress I know nothing about although I saw her in another film a few years ago. She plays the role of Dr Emma LLoyd, a radio presenter in New York. She doesn’t read the news or play records, however; her speciality is offering romantic relationship advice to listeners who phone in with problems. She’s popular with a lot of women, and is engaged to be married to Richard (Colin Firth).

All seems to be going smoothly in Emma’s life; but she’s not so popular with the ex-boyfriend of one her listeners. Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) decides to take an unusual form of revenge, with the help of a young geeky friend. And so, when Emma and Richard go to register their intention to marry, they discover something so bizarre that she’s convinced it must be a mistake…

The film is billed as a romantic comedy, and there were certainly one or two amusing moments in the film. It’s mostly quite light-hearted, and it made a good evening’s viewing. I was a little disappointed in the outcome; it was inevitable from fairly early in the film, but towards the end I began to hope I might have been wrong...

I felt a little sorry for Colin Firth, once again cast as a solid, dependable and ultimately dull kind of guy, while Patrick, a brave firefighter, is supposedly a romantic hero. I didn’t find him at all endearing; from his passive aggression as he takes his ‘revenge’, to a decidedly gross cake-tasting scene where he talks with his mouth full and behaves in an embarrassing way. There’s also a scene where he makes another character drunk, although he then behaves well afterwards.

However, the film is well-made, with an unusual storyline and some subplots I wasn’t expecting. There are some nice scenes with Emma's father, bizarrely known as 'Wilder' (Sam Shepard). On the whole we enjoyed the film, and I'd recommend it in a low-key way for anyone who likes this genre.

The rating is 12A (PG-13 in the US), which I thought about right. There’s one instance of ‘strong’ language, a non-explicit bedroom scene (and brief mention of it after the event) and I don’t recall any violence. I can’t imagine it would be of the slightest interest to anyone under the age of about fifteen.

Review copyright 2017 Sue's DVD Reviews

Enough Said (starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

I’m not sure why this film was recommended to me by Amazon; I don’t think I’ve heard of any of the actors before, although it fits nicely into the ‘rom com’ genre. I put ‘Enough Said’ on my wishlist after reading a few reviews, and I was given the blu-ray for my birthday earlier in the year.

Last night we wanted something light to watch, and this fit the bill nicely. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, who works as a masseuse. She is fairly amicably divorced, and close to her eighteen-year-old daughter. At a party she meets a middle-aged and somewhat overweight man, Albert (James Gandolfini), and while she feels no attraction, she quite likes him and a friendship develops.

The friendship is obviously going to lead to something more (it’s that kind of film) but it’s taken fairly slowly, with a lot of banter and some good chemistry that leads them to becoming close friends. Albert is also divorced, and also has a daughter who’s about to head off for college, so the two have quite a bit in common, as well as their shared sense of humour.

Meanwhile, Eva has also become friendly with a poet called Marianne (Catherine Keener) after meeting her at the same party, and then becoming her masseuse. Marianne is yet another divorcee, who spends a lot of time ranting about her ex-husband, whom she rather despises.

The main plot focuses on a somewhat unlikely coincidence, which would be a spoiler to reveal, and then a great deal of cowardice - or perhaps outright dishonesty - on Eva’s behalf as she doesn’t reveal something she has discovered that could drastically affect her new friendships. A side-story, never fully resolved, involves her daughter’s best friend.

There are some amusing moments in this, and the acting is believable enough, although it’s a bit of a strange film without a great deal of plot. We could relate to the trauma of seeing one’s offspring depart for university, knowing they’re moving on and becoming separate. But the complexity of relationships, and the acceptance of divorce and remarriage as ‘normal’ was a bit depressing, and some of the humour was not really to our tastes.

The film is quite fast-paced, under an hour and a half in all, and we quite liked it, though it’s not one we’d necessarily watch again. I thought the rating of 12A (PG-13 in the US) was about right; there’s no violence and nothing explicit.

However I wouldn’t want to watch it with a younger teenager. There are a lot of ‘adult’ references, and frank discussion of body parts and intimacies. There is also quite a lot of bad language; not the worst words, but still more than I’m comfortable with.

The blu-ray has an ‘extra’ containing outtakes, mostly involving one or other character laughing at inappropriate times.

Review copyright 2017 Sue's DVD Reviews

Sunshine on Leith

I was staying with relatives. After an enjoyable family party, they suggested watching a DVD. From a pile of those I hadn’t seen, they suggested watching this one. None of us knew anything about it, other than that it included music from the band The Proclaimers. The front cover said it was the ‘feel-good’ film of the year in 2013, and it promised to be something a little different from the average rom-com.

‘Sunshine on Leith’ opens with some rather disturbing images of war, and I thought I might not like it… but the action quickly moves to the lives of two young soldiers (George McKay and Kevin Guthrie), returning to Edinburgh from a spell of duty in Afghanistan. One of them is in love with the other’s sister…

There are several subplots to this film, and I found it a bit hard to keep track of who was whom, as there were several characters, including large numbers of extras. There’s a new romance, an anniversary party for one of the soldiers’ parents (I never did remember which was which) and a disastrous proposal. There are several scenes set in pubs, and there’s also a traumatic side-story about an illegitimate daughter, recently discovered, which threatens to break up a happy marriage…

While the topics and settings are completely different, I was reminded more than once of the film ‘Mamma Mia’ featuring songs by Abba. It felt as though several of the scenes were set up in order to introduce a song, rather than because they added to the story - and, in classic musical style, everyone drops what they’re doing and the extras, who were hanging around drinking beer or just walking along the road, suddenly join in with well-executed choreography.

It was nicely done, and the finale - the one song we all knew - was very enjoyable. However not all the storylines were really resolved, and there were too many gut-wrenching moments for it to be a ‘feel-good’ film, as advertised. Still, it was a nice bit of escapism, worth seeing once.

The rating is PG, which I think is about right, although I doubt if it would appeal much to children. There’s a small amount of violence, nothing explicitly adult and not much implied.

Review copyright 2017 Sue's DVD Reviews