Bill Nighy's performance as Lawrence, a shy, middle aged, British professional is reason enough to see this movie.
Nighy is flamboyantly unobtrusive, deafeningly silent. Fascinating in all the ways he can be self effacing.
In a café, Lawrence meets Gina, and, for reasons the film never bothers to explore, he abandons what appears to have been a lifetime of being frozen in social anxiety disorder and embarks on a romance with this mousy, morose girl, young enough to be his daughter.
Gina travels with Lawrence to the G-8 Summit, where she, like Lawrence, and, again, for no clear reason, abandons her mousiness and gives world leaders a good talking to, trying to get them to save the world.
The romance is only so-so. It's ironic that a movie that wants to be so high minded plays the oldest game in the world -- featuring a man in his late fifties, and looking that age, if not older, with a child/woman, with no life of her own, young enough to be his daughter, or, even, by the looks of it, his granddaughter.
this part of the movie is just gross. But Molly Haskell and others have gone on and on about the cheap trick of geezer-babe pairings; I'll stop here.
The politics of this movie appear Saccharine sweet, but in fact they are cynical of the worst kind. If we could save the world by shipping bucket loads of money to the Third World, the world would be saved by now.
What happens when you ship bucket loads of money to the Third World, though, is that corrupt leaders grow fatter, war lords buy more advanced weaponry with which to slaughter opposing tribes, and matériel is shipped in that no one in the village knows how to use, so a year later you find taps with no water coming out, and electric light sockets that can't illuminate a room.
And, yes, I have lived and worked in the Third World, and I am here to tell you that the politics of this movie are the worst kind of self-aggrandizing garbage.
But, hey. Nighy's performance is worth it.
Nighy is flamboyantly unobtrusive, deafeningly silent. Fascinating in all the ways he can be self effacing.
In a café, Lawrence meets Gina, and, for reasons the film never bothers to explore, he abandons what appears to have been a lifetime of being frozen in social anxiety disorder and embarks on a romance with this mousy, morose girl, young enough to be his daughter.
Gina travels with Lawrence to the G-8 Summit, where she, like Lawrence, and, again, for no clear reason, abandons her mousiness and gives world leaders a good talking to, trying to get them to save the world.
The romance is only so-so. It's ironic that a movie that wants to be so high minded plays the oldest game in the world -- featuring a man in his late fifties, and looking that age, if not older, with a child/woman, with no life of her own, young enough to be his daughter, or, even, by the looks of it, his granddaughter.
this part of the movie is just gross. But Molly Haskell and others have gone on and on about the cheap trick of geezer-babe pairings; I'll stop here.
The politics of this movie appear Saccharine sweet, but in fact they are cynical of the worst kind. If we could save the world by shipping bucket loads of money to the Third World, the world would be saved by now.
What happens when you ship bucket loads of money to the Third World, though, is that corrupt leaders grow fatter, war lords buy more advanced weaponry with which to slaughter opposing tribes, and matériel is shipped in that no one in the village knows how to use, so a year later you find taps with no water coming out, and electric light sockets that can't illuminate a room.
And, yes, I have lived and worked in the Third World, and I am here to tell you that the politics of this movie are the worst kind of self-aggrandizing garbage.
But, hey. Nighy's performance is worth it.