How to Make Love Like An Englishman
DIRECTOR: Tom Vaughan
CAST: Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba, Malcolm McDowell, Ben McKenzie
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LNS
RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes
RATING: 1 star (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
CLICHED and by the numbers, this rom-com features some pretty lazy film-making. Also known as Some Kind of Beautiful as well as Lessons in Love, it features predictable set-ups and pairs up Pierce Brosnan with both Salma Hayek and Jessica Alba and there is not a single spark of chemistry to be found.
Three different names for a film that doesn’t have a subtitle in sight smacks of desperation – but changing the film name is not going to change this into anything watchable.
Brosnan plays a Cambridge poetry professor, Richard Haig, who rejects his (unseen, but hinted at in the synopsis) life of Byronic excess for cosy American domestic bliss in southern California when he gets one of his students, Kate (Alba), pregnant.
A few years later he is living in the pool house because Kate has hooked up with someone else and insists her sister Olivia (Hayek) comes to supervise because she doesn’t want to leave Richard in charge of their child Jake (Duncan Joiner).
So now Richard, because the script says so, decides to pursue Olivia – causing a rift between the sisters.
Hayek proves she has excellent comic timing, it’s just too bad the jokes aren’t worthy of her effort – she is better than physical gags that require her to jump naked into a pool.
Alba is amiable but there is nothing to the one-dimensional Kate role that requires any great acting skill. Brosnan walks a middle line between affable professor and cad, creating a rather boring character with no edges, so why either of the women are supposed to find him attractive is a mystery.
There is a serious storyline in here somewhere about green cards and crossing the American/Mexican border, but it gets glossed over in dismissive fashion to get back to how great life is if you are an old white male in Hollywood. Witless, this film mines stereotypes about gender, what it is to be British manner, American mannerisms and old people for a good lesson in how not to make a rom-com.
If you liked, Rumor has It or Good Luck Chuck, you will like this.