LOVE, ROSIE
DIRECTOR: Christian Ditter
CAST: Sam Claflin, Lily Collins, Christian Cooke, Tamsin Egerton, Suki Waterhouse
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LS
RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes
RATING: 2 stars (out of 5)
Jordan Mintzer
A schmaltzy take on the BFFs-to-bedfellows subgenre that’s been seen in rom-coms like No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits, Love, Rosie offers another longwinded reason why two best buddies in a platonic relationship should shut up and do it already.
That’s in any case the obvious moral of the story in this contrived adaptation of Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern’s book, brought to the screen by German director Christian Ditter in an overtly polished version that features a “best-of” soundtrack and two leads whose good looks take the place of good writing.
A gushy opening introduces us to Rosie (Collins) and Alex (Claflin), lifelong friends who seem to be inseparable until their lives – especially their sex lives – start getting in the way. About to graduate high school and still both virgins, they are pulled apart by circumstance and their failure to confess their true feelings for each other.
Alex hops across the Atlantic on a full scholarship to Harvard Medical School, while Rosie plans to attend Boston College until a monkey wrench is thrown in her direction: she accidentally falls pregnant.
With abortion out of the question, Rosie decides to stay home and raise the child, all the while keeping it a secret from Alex. That she manages to do this in our internet age is just one of several head-scratching twists in the script, which relies on any number of movie mix-ups and quid pro quos to keep Rosie and Alex apart for more than a decade.
Stuck in Boston and hitched to an American ice queen (Egerton), Alex begins to long for Rosie just as she gets stuff in order, taking a job as a chamber-maid and reconnecting with the baby daddy who messed things up in the first place. A slew of other coincidences lead to a race-against-the-clock last act, and one in which anyone who’s read the rom-com rulebook will know what happens.
The writing and direction are of a rather generic order. Collins and Claflin provide ample eye-candy and create a decent amount of chemistry, even if the relationship portrayed often feels more serendipitous than real, while their characters actually look younger as time passes, as if they were stricken with the Benjamin Button disease. But there’s no denying an innate desire to see these two find happiness and finally get it on, and it’s that magnetic attraction which holds the movie together.
A soundtrack includes hits by musos ranging from Elton John to Beyonce, not to mention Salt-N-Pepa’s 1987 jam Push It – which the makers include in the scene where Rosie goes into labour. Get it? – Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Friends With Benefits or No Strings Attached, you’ll enjoy this.