Friday
16Jan2009
Movie Review - 'Last Chance Harvey'
Friday, January 16, 2009 at 12:42AM | Last Chance Harvey
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson  |
Last Chance Harvey is kind of like a romantic comedy for grown-ups, and that's the good news and the bad news. Now, a romantic comedy for grown-ups might sound silly. I present Exhibit A: Bride Wars. Grown-ups don’t behave the way Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway do in that film. For Exhibit B: Maid in Manhattan, the film with the shortest courtship I can think of. With one walk around Central Park, the dashing millionaire (Ralph Fiennes) knows he’s swallowed whole by his love for the hotel maid (Jennifer Lopez). Wouldn’t ever happen that way. Not with grown-ups, at least.
Last Chance Harvey has its problems, although two of them clearly aren’t its leads, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. These actors are so good that the roles they’ve turned down would be substantial enough to get them in the Hall of Fame. At age 71, Hoffman isn’t afforded as many leading roles as he was 20 or 30 years ago, so our impression of him may have changed. But make no mistake, he’s still a captivating figure on screen, and now he seems to be having more fun than ever.
Thompson is one of the most graceful, effortless, and intelligent actors of her generation, who, like Hoffman, can do pretty much anything she feels like. But what they do here is more remarkable, because they aren’t playing these great, foundation-shaking characters we’ve seen them portray in years past. Harvey and Kate are just people. They have jobs and lives and frustrations and fears.
Harvey writes jingles for a living, and finds out that he doesn’t write jingles anymore around the same time he’s set to give his daughter away to be married. Except, suddenly, his daughter wants her stepfather to give her away instead. That’s a double shot.
He’s rude to a woman at the airport, and the next night he sees her in a pub and tries to apologize, but Kate is having none of it. At first. Then the conversation starts, and instead of a meet cute – one of those movie moments where characters meet in some unexpected way and have an instant attraction to one another – Last Chance Harvey lets Harvey, Kate, Hoffman, and Thompson find their own ways into this. And it works, for as long as its allowed to.
Reader Comments