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"Imagine Me & You"!
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Nov 12, 2006
4
of
4 people found this review helpful
Imagine Me & You" is your typical romantic comedy. You know, girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl falls in love with another woman at her wedding.
We're living in a post-"Brokeback" world. And while "Imagine Me & You" is never going to be a threat at the Academy Awards show, it boasts unusually clever dialogue, appealing performances from the entire cast and a glossy, professional sheen.
The first duty of any director of a romantic comedy is to make us care about the couple at hand. And we do. We sincerely want Rachel (Piper Perabo) and Luce (Lena Headey) to live happily ever after.
But writer-director Ol Parker makes a sizable misstep in his setup: We also sincerely want Rachel and her new husband, Heck (Matthew Goode), to live happily ever after. Rachel, Luce and Heck are all particularly attractive people, in personality as well as looks, and we don't want any of them to suffer pain.
But in a triangle, somebody is going to get hurt. It's simple geometry.
The story is not complex and relies entirely too much on characters accidentally running into each other in London, which otherwise seems like a pretty big town. Rachel is the happy bride, Heck the happy groom and Luce the happy florist who provides the flowers and for some reason seems to have been invited to the wedding and reception.
Midway down the aisle, Rachel catches Luce's eye, and it's a magic moment for both. As Rachel asks some friends later in the film, "Do you guys believe in love at first sight?"
"Well, it saves time," says one.
The story bogs down in the middle as Rachel can't decide whether to be true to her charming and handsome husband or to follow her heart with someone and something new. The answer seems predetermined, and the stoic little speeches of self-sacrifice do not quite assuage the audience's sympathetic emotional pain.
But during this section, we can recall the many delightful details the film offers us. Luce's florist shop is called Flowered Up, which somehow is an absolutely perfect name. Heck's womanizing best friend, when boasting of his prowess, says, "You know, they teach the birds and the bees about me."
Heck describes Luce as "as gay as a tennis player." And a woman comes into Luce's florist shop and asks, "Do you have something that says, 'I'm sorry he's dead, but not that sorry. He was just a dog. You shouldn't have loved him more than me'?"
Celia Imrie, who is so wonderful in "Nanny McPhee," is delicious here as Rachel's elegant, yet indelicate, mother. Darren Boyd scores as Heck's best friend, while Goode is irresistible as Heck. And young Boo Jackson makes a nice impression as an overly precocious girl who, for reasons of narrative more than logic, appears to be everywhere at the same time.
As Luce, Headey is more appealing and sympathetic than she has been since her debut in "The Summer House." But the star is Perabo, alluring and confident in the role for which she affects an admirably Gwynethesque British accent. Though it is anyone's guess why a filmmaker would spurn all the actresses in England to hire an American, when she is a relative unknown like Perabo.
Like so much in the movie, that is a question best not pondered. If you don't think about the movie, you will find yourself laughing and swept up in the romance.
This movie review was written by Daniel Neman (Times-Dispatch movie reviewer)! |
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