One Day is promoted as drama romance and not a rom com. On all three counts I would call it out anyway, for it is a melodramatic, episodic tale of two best friends in London, Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess), who flirt with love over a long period but play on the standard cliché that requires they eventually end up together, regardless how many marriages and children intervene.
One Day has too many short episodes from college in the '80's until professional life in 2011, and each seems just a variation on another before it: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again, well, you know the routine. During all these little skirmishes Emma remains wholesome (no stretch for the perpetually cute Hathaway, reminding me of Sally Hawkins' Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky. But without Hawkins' charisma).
Dexter is a cad and Lothario almost all the way, making him unlikeable and difficult to gain our sympathy. His cavalier treatment of his mother (the ever-interesting Patricia Clarkson) and father (Ken Stott) adds to his surly persona. In addition, Sturgess needs a little coaching or better script if he wishes to catch up with the Ryans (Gosling and Reynolds) in the emerging leading-man lineup.
Nowhere do I feel a real sexual heat, especially since in most of the film they are avowing to be just friends. Moreover in the numerous years/episodes I do not feel the intellectual and emotional connection that comes so naturally in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Sunset series. Even director Lone Scherfig's Parisian scenes are vacant, poor cousins to Woody Allen's romantic City of Lights in Midnight in Paris.
As an Anglophile, I usually can forgive many sins if a film gives me an adequate dose of the great city, but as with the Paris background, romance takes a holiday even from the cities.
One Day has too many short episodes from college in the '80's until professional life in 2011, and each seems just a variation on another before it: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again, well, you know the routine. During all these little skirmishes Emma remains wholesome (no stretch for the perpetually cute Hathaway, reminding me of Sally Hawkins' Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky. But without Hawkins' charisma).
Dexter is a cad and Lothario almost all the way, making him unlikeable and difficult to gain our sympathy. His cavalier treatment of his mother (the ever-interesting Patricia Clarkson) and father (Ken Stott) adds to his surly persona. In addition, Sturgess needs a little coaching or better script if he wishes to catch up with the Ryans (Gosling and Reynolds) in the emerging leading-man lineup.
Nowhere do I feel a real sexual heat, especially since in most of the film they are avowing to be just friends. Moreover in the numerous years/episodes I do not feel the intellectual and emotional connection that comes so naturally in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Sunset series. Even director Lone Scherfig's Parisian scenes are vacant, poor cousins to Woody Allen's romantic City of Lights in Midnight in Paris.
As an Anglophile, I usually can forgive many sins if a film gives me an adequate dose of the great city, but as with the Paris background, romance takes a holiday even from the cities.