Love, Rosie (October 24, 2014)
Love, Rosie is a romantic comedy based on Irish writer Cecelia Ahern’s Chick-lit novel, Where Rainbows End; a title that gives us a good clue as to the tone of the film.
It’s Ireland’s contribution to a sub-genre of romantic comedy in which two closes friends of the opposite sex cannot see themselves as a romantic couple while the increasingly impatient audience can.
The charismatic Lily Collins keeps us watching, but Juliette Towhidi’s (Calendar Girls) script is so clichéd, predictable, and contrived that German Director Christian Ditter (French for Beginners) can only let his beautiful cast race through the soapy, episodic years until the inevitable outcome.
Love, Rosie is also a story about missed opportunities and bad choices.
Alex Stewart (Sam Claflin) and Rosie Dunne (Collins) have been best friends and neighbours since childhood. They could have been childhood sweethearts but Rosie failed to kiss Alex at a party and, ever since, they have kept a physical, if not psychological distance.
Now graduates heading for university, Alex is making plans that, subconsciously or not, should drive them closer.
Stewart wants to be a doctor and, this being Dublin, he naturally heads for Harvard in Boston with its large Irish population.
He encourages Rosie to apply to Boston College’s school of hotel management which she does.
Rosie’s dad works in a hotel and Rosie’s dream is to open her own where she will not be controlled by the horrible boss who her father has to contend with. These families must have money stashed away as even with (unlikely) scholarships going to university in the States is not cheap.
But then again, realism is not what you look for in a romcom, obstacles are. Just when everything looks, well, rosy, Rosie has a one night stand with her handsome prom date Greg (Christian Cooke) and, naturally, falls pregnant.
This being Dublin, she does not have an abortion but goes on to support her daughter as a maid in a hotel, keeping her secret from Alex until he pays her a surprise visit from Boston.
After the baby, Towhidi’s script has nothing more to do than to come up with different way to keep Alex and Rosie apart for the remainder of its running time.
The obstacles are limited to Alex’s girlfriends (Tamsin Egerton is terrific as a neurotic, high-powered snob and Suki Waterhouse makes her film debut) and two ill-advised marriages.
The only character to age over the twelve years is Rosie’s daughter, but Rosie’s hair style and wardrobe change.
Lily Collins (Mirror, Mirror) is a skilled and quite beautiful comedienne who, despite the embarrassing moments she is subjected to here (including being treated by a young, male gynaecologist for a condom stuck in her vagina and a stranger in a lift hearing about it), will hopefully appear in more noteworthy comic roles on the back of this film.
by Joyce Glasser, MT film reviewer
