I Give It A Year Review

4th Jun 2013

We meet Josh (Rafe Spall, Prometheus) and Nat (Rose Bryne, Damages) on their wedding day, having met mere months before many of their friends and family believe they’ve rushed into getting married and Nat’s bitter sister, Naomi (Minnie Driver, Conviction), sums up everyone’s thoughts when she mutters “I give it a year”. And so we find ourselves following Nat and Josh through their first year of marriage as they struggle to keep it together despite circumstances being stacked against them: they aren’t well suited, they irritate each other and, most importantly, they both seem to be in love with other people. Will Nat and Josh make it through a year of marriage or will everything fall apart just as those around them predict?

It’s very rare to find a romcom where you are meant to be rooting for the featured couple to split, but this is arguably the USP of I Give It A Year, and it makes a refreshing change. Certainly there are films where you hope the couple do not get together, but that’s not intentional and is usually a result of badly written characters mixed with not-particularly-likeable actors (Jennifer Lopez, in anything, springs to mind). The problem here is what IGIAY offers in originality, it lacks in humour, which is quite problematic for a comedy.

IGIAY is written by the co-writer of Borat, Dan Mazer, and there are certainly some funny moments, but as with The Break Up, this is not a particularly happy subject matter and while this is a reasonably amusing take on the situation, one can’t help but feel that the characters might not react to certain situations with such good humour: divorce, hilarious!

The cast was generally good, part English (Minnie Driver, Steven Merchant, Olivia Coleman) and part Hollywood (Rose Bryne, Anna Farris, Simon Baker) but despite this a lot of the jokes fell flat and it was odd to see certain actors in small and genuinely unfunny roles (Olivia Coleman, you are far, far better than this)!! If Josh was meant to be highly irritating then Rafe Spall pulled this off with aplomb and Simon Baker (The Mentalist) never has any problems pulling off cheesy and sleazy.

This is the type of film that shouldn’t be watched if you are about to get married. Or want a good laugh. IGIAY had an original premise; sadly it did not have much comedy.