By Chris Tookey
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I GIVE IT A YEAR (15)
Verdict: I give it two stars
Rating: 
Here is a brave, or possibly foolhardy, attempt by the producers of Love Actually and Bridget Jones’ Diary to infuse realism into rom com.
The central characters are a mismatched married couple. He’s socially awkward author Josh (Rafe Spall), who chooses as his best man a foul-mouthed creep who wouldn’t know the meaning of the word ‘appropriate’. Stephen Merchant plays this character as so relentlessly yobbish he makes you despise Josh for having him as a friend.
The wife is ambitious, corporate marketing whizz Nat (Rose Byrne), whose high-maintenance elegance make you wonder if she ever actually talked to her fiancé.
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A dire double act: Rafe Spall as Josh and Stephen Merchant as Danny in I Give It A Year
The titular prediction is uttered by Nat’s shrewish sister (Minnie Driver), whose main leisure activity is humiliating her husband (Jason Flemyng). This is about as heartwarming as a spat within the Huhne family. Over the first year of marriage, it becomes apparent that Josh’s former girlfriend (Anna Faris), a kind-hearted charity worker, is much more suited to his life-in-the-slow-lane approach.
A smoothie American billionaire (Simon Baker) turns out to be the ideal man for Nat. After all, he’s the heir to a solvents fortune, which is not to be sniffed at.
The married twosome stave off marital meltdown by consulting a relationships counsellor (Olivia Colman) who is so staggeringly insensitive it’s hard to believe anyone would ever take her advice.
The funniest scene is a three-in-a-bed romp as Anna Faris gamely tries and fails to fit in with a new boyfriend’s sexual requirements. Although writer-director Dan Mazer, a longtime collaborator with Sacha Baron Cohen, delivers funny set-pieces, he neglects to make us care about his characters. My principal emotion was astonishment at their infantilism.
I kept seeing and hearing things that didn’t feel true to the English, middle-class setting; they felt more like a desperate attempt to please fans of The Hangover 2.
Add to these failings Mazer’s lack of promise as a director â€" there are too many ugly framings, and the editing is amateurish, sometimes too slack, sometimes too choppy â€" and y ou have a movie that would have gained from a more experienced person at the helm, who might also have worked on the script’s lack of humanity.
I wouldn’t be surprised if crude characterisation and bottom-of-the-barrel bawdiness help this to become a hit â€" after all, they didn’t hurt Bridesmaids or The Inbetweeners Movie â€" but as Working Title romcoms go, this is nowhere near the quality of Four Weddings, Notting Hill or Love Actually.
Of course, if you hated all three of those movies, you may well like this a lot.
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