What if...? Interesting idea explored here, but not in a very deep or memorable way. Depending on whether Gwyneth Paltrow catches a train, she has two different lives.
1. She stays with her loser boyfriend, who can't end a relationship with his old girlfriend. Meanwhile she toils as a waitress and sandwich delivery person.
2. She leaves her boyfriend and starts seeing a guy whose dialogue consists mainly of Monty Python quotes. Meanwhile she toils as a public relations person.
Both storylines involve an ordinary life. Neither particularly exciting, neither particularly awful. Neither boyfriend is any great shakes. There's nothing to make you root for one possible "life" over the other, really. So it's a pleasant little series of sketches of how young professionals live in London, and not much more.
I did get the feeling the script was trying to say that the life with the Monty Python boyfriend was the "good" life, while the one with the old boyfriend was the "bad" one. But let's get real for a minute...we all know guys who quote entire Monty Python routines at great lengths, right? They have a tendency to live in their mothers' basements and spend all of their spare cash on consumer electronics and computer components. Do you see women like Gwyneth Paltrow falling for men who are obsessed with Monty Python?
John Hannah, who played the Monty Python boyfriend, has a thankless role. He has some secret, which isn't particularly awful, as it turns out...but for the convenience of the script that requires a lovers' conflict, he's forced to keep his mouth shut and watch the conflict develop, rather than say the one short sentence that will cure everything. It becomes evident early in the film that he has some secret or another. I found myself talking back to his character, "just say it, already!"
But there wasn't much of an emotional connection with him or anyone else in the film. Cute, silly, occasionally funny (particularly the best friend of the cheating boyfriend, who gets the funniest lines in the film)...but ultimately forgettable. A fine way to spend a couple hours, if you don't demand much from your movies.
1. She stays with her loser boyfriend, who can't end a relationship with his old girlfriend. Meanwhile she toils as a waitress and sandwich delivery person.
2. She leaves her boyfriend and starts seeing a guy whose dialogue consists mainly of Monty Python quotes. Meanwhile she toils as a public relations person.
Both storylines involve an ordinary life. Neither particularly exciting, neither particularly awful. Neither boyfriend is any great shakes. There's nothing to make you root for one possible "life" over the other, really. So it's a pleasant little series of sketches of how young professionals live in London, and not much more.
I did get the feeling the script was trying to say that the life with the Monty Python boyfriend was the "good" life, while the one with the old boyfriend was the "bad" one. But let's get real for a minute...we all know guys who quote entire Monty Python routines at great lengths, right? They have a tendency to live in their mothers' basements and spend all of their spare cash on consumer electronics and computer components. Do you see women like Gwyneth Paltrow falling for men who are obsessed with Monty Python?
John Hannah, who played the Monty Python boyfriend, has a thankless role. He has some secret, which isn't particularly awful, as it turns out...but for the convenience of the script that requires a lovers' conflict, he's forced to keep his mouth shut and watch the conflict develop, rather than say the one short sentence that will cure everything. It becomes evident early in the film that he has some secret or another. I found myself talking back to his character, "just say it, already!"
But there wasn't much of an emotional connection with him or anyone else in the film. Cute, silly, occasionally funny (particularly the best friend of the cheating boyfriend, who gets the funniest lines in the film)...but ultimately forgettable. A fine way to spend a couple hours, if you don't demand much from your movies.