Eager to make a Brit-flick romantic comedy, director David Kane carves out this disposable product called This Year's Love which is essentially about six different loser-characters living in London and swapping partners on and off for two years. There is no more depth to it that that, aside from the odd, half-hearted attempt to add more background to the characters. This is only successful in one of them, namely Kathy Burke's character of a self-deemed "fat bird" with no self-esteem and it is mostly because she plays her with effortless conviction that she is enjoyable to watch. This character is also one of the few sources for comedy in This Year's Love. I know the rest of the film tries to be funny but it never quite gets there; it barely manages smirkworthy.
Aside from Burke, some other decent parts are the way these six characters meet. It never feels forced. You'd think that managing six intertwining relationships would be difficult to pull off, but this feels very natural in the film -- the characters meet in the most ordinary, normal and logical ways like in a pub, at an airport, at a supermarket or at an auction. After all, they all live in the same vicinity -- Camden.
This Year's Love isn't bad exactly, but since it manages neither funny nor romantic I'd say this is a pretty fatal failure of a romantic comedy.
4/10
Aside from Burke, some other decent parts are the way these six characters meet. It never feels forced. You'd think that managing six intertwining relationships would be difficult to pull off, but this feels very natural in the film -- the characters meet in the most ordinary, normal and logical ways like in a pub, at an airport, at a supermarket or at an auction. After all, they all live in the same vicinity -- Camden.
This Year's Love isn't bad exactly, but since it manages neither funny nor romantic I'd say this is a pretty fatal failure of a romantic comedy.
4/10