Leap Year

A new review from The Movie Snob

Leap Year (D). Metacritic.com reveals that I am not alone in wondering whether Hollywood is capable of making a decent romantic comedy any more. I'm not complaining about the formula; the formula is fine. I'm complaining about Hollywood's apparent inability to make a formulaic movie that is believable. Here we have Amy Adams (Julie & Julia), cute and likable as ever as Bostonian Anna Brady. Anna's boyfriend of four years won't pop the question, so when he goes to Ireland for work, she chases after him in order to capitalize on a quaint Irish tradition that a woman can propose to a man during a leap year on February 29th. But inclement weather causes Anna to land rather a long way from Dublin, and before you can say It Happened One Night, she's off on a road trip with the brooding Irish hunk Declan as chauffeur. So far, so good -- It Happened One Night is a fun movie even after all these years. But Declan is such a jerk, and Anna is such a ding-dong, and so many ridiculous things pile up at the end of the movie that you just want to shake Amy Adams and ask why she doesn't demand a better script.