romantic comedy
Helen Hawkins
After gender-flipping the National’s Malvolio, the director Simon Godwin might have been expected to be equally bold with Much Ado About Nothing at the same address. A same-sex Beatrice and Benedick romance? Dogberry in bondage gear, zonked out on poppers? True, Godwin has been free with the text, cutting freely and turning Governor Leonato into a hotel owner with a wife instead of a brother, but this production is still unexpectedly trad. It’s set in Sicily in “an imagined past”, though looking a lot like Golden Age Hollywood, where Don Pedro and his officers are checking into the Hotel Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Sandra Bullock is on terrific form in this rollicking romcom in which she plays Loretta Sage, a historian who writes bestselling romance novels in which the heroine has adventures in exotic places with her lover, Dash. Now, still grieving the loss of her archeologist husband five years before, Loretta has been sent on a book-signing tour by her manager, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, giving it both barrels).Bad enough for Loretta that she has to leave her apartment where she could happily stay for ever, but she has to go on the road with Alan (Channing Tatum), the chisel-jawed, hunky model who Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lots of drama follows well-worn paths; just as we expect that in a tragedy that Chekhov's gun (or variants of it) will deliver the denouement, so we know that in a romcom the two leads will end up together. So – no spoilers, but you know the drill – Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson's characters overcome all sorts of obstacles that could thwart their romance. Only in Kat Coiro's film (based on a graphic novel by Bobby Crosby), it's after possibly the most preposterous set-up yet.But it delivers. Lopez is pop star Kat Valdez, about to marry her equally famous beau, singer Bastian (Maluma), at a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This pallid chick flick limps out on release having changed its title since its Berlinale 2020 debut; in the US it's known as My Salinger Year, but perhaps market research in Blighty decreed that name-checking the author of The Catcher in the Rye wouldn't play as well here. Based on novelist Joanna Rakoff’s 2014 auto-fiction, it’s an account of the period she spent working for a legendary literary agent in Manhattan in the mid-90s. While Rakoff’s book has some appeal for readers interested in publishing or nostalgic for accounts of ambitious young graduates trying to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Emotions don't come in half-measures in Rare Beasts, with which Billie Piper makes a commendably edgy debut as writer-director onscreen while affording herself a stonking star part. Dedicated., we're informed, to "all my friends and all their woes", this self-described "anti-romcom" may be too stylistically indulgent for some.But see out its excesses and you emerge with a potent look at three very different relationships amidst our rancorous, chaotic times. And Piper, back in our midst for the first time since I Hate Suzie, here confirms herself as a huge talent who never chooses the easy Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A teen comedy with a thematic difference, Moxie has enough memorable moments to firmly establish comedian Amy Poehler as a director worth reckoning with in what is her second film, following Wine Country in 2019. Telling of the teenage Vivian's coming-of-age as a rebel against the landscape of #MeToo, the Netflix movie goes enough of the way towards transforming this genre's familiar tropes that one only wishes it had enough, well, moxie to go still further. There's undeniable pleasure to be had from the collective awakening that transforms the female student body of Rockport High in a Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Good Grief, a new show from American screenwriter and playwright Lorien Haynes, can’t work out what it wants to be. It’s billed as an “online filmed production”. Its stars, Sian Clifford (fresh from a BAFTA win for Fleabag) and Nikesh Patel (last seen in Mindy Kaling’s new version of Four Weddings and a Funeral), are acting for a big auditorium, despite their TV chops. But it was filmed, with a masked-up crew, and is being broadcast as a recording. So what is it, then? First and foremost, a show that lives up to its title. We follow Cat (Clifford, pictured below) and Adam (Patel) in Read more ...
Owen Richards
Romcoms. We all know the tried and tested formula: immature guy, uptight girl, they meet, they like each other, hate each other, and end up in love. It’s as reliable as it is unrealistic, and sometimes it takes a film like Baby Done to remind you there is a better way. One that is funnier, more believable, and yes, even more romantic.Stand-up comic Rose Matafeo and Harry Potter alum Matthew Lewis star as Zoe and Tim, the last couple standing in the marriage and baby stakes. Everyone else is boring and settling down, but these two (and Zoe’s new-age friend Molly) are quite happy as things are Read more ...
India Lewis
There’s something simultaneously cringey and also addictive about Dolly Alderton’s prose. Ghosts is definitely feminism lite, a palimpsest for young women in London who are into yoga and small plates. But that is not to detract from the fact that it is eminently readable, and frequently charming.The narrator and protagonist of Ghosts, 32-year-old Nina Dean, is a very thinly veiled portrait of the author. Alderton has amended some details, but the bare bones are very obvious to any readers of her 2018 Everything I Know About Love. Nina is short where Alderton is tall, dark-haired where Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We may have started out among the wholesome pleasures of nature, but we ended up in the bedroom – once, that is, we had recovered from the flying breasts… Soprano Louise Alder’s recital – the last in the Wigmore Hall’s month-long lunchtime series – had a twinkle in its eye and the weekend firmly in its sights. A luscious blend of German Romanticism and French eroticism took us from Fanny Mendelssohn and early Berg to Bizet, Poulenc and Satie. Heady stuff for daylight hours, and a delicious send-off for this superb series.Alder’s piquant, text-driven delivery is married to an increasing depth Read more ...
theartsdesk
There are films to meet every taste in theartsdesk's guide to the best movies currently on release. In our considered opinion, any of the titles below is well worth your attention.Enola Holmes ★★★★ Millie Bobby Brown gives the patriarchy what-for in a new Sherlock-related franchiseEternal Beauty ★★★★ Craig Roberts's fantasy conjurs surreal images and magnetic performancesI'm Thinking of Ending Things ★★★★ Charlie Kaufman's eerie road trip through love and lossLes Misérables ★★★★★ An immersive, morally complex thriller set in the troubled suburbs of present day ParisMax Richter's Sleep ★★★★ Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The first words of Sunnymead Court, a new play at the Tristan Bates Theatre, are ominous. “We are transitioning from human experiences to digital experiences.” Oof. Thankfully, this isn’t another gloomy lockdown drama about the evils of Zoom quizzes – it’s the story of an unlikely romance between two women who live metres from each other, but have never spoken. We meet Marie (Gemma Lawrence, who also wrote the piece) first – a socially-anxious copywriter with a strict routine, which includes blasting William Onyeabor’s "Fantastic Man" at 11am every day. Stella (Remmie Milner, pictured Read more ...