ONE DAY

“ONE DAY” (Anne Hathaway & Jim Sturgess)

I thought this was going to be a remake of “Same Next, Next Year”, but it isn’t – It’s much, much worse than that. The One Day in question is July 15th – St. Swithins Day in England. Those of us old (& lucky) enough to remember the British series ‘Doctor In The House’ will remember St. Swithins as the name of the hospital the young interns worked at initially before becoming full-fledged medical practitioners. If that sounds familiar, yes, “Scrubs” literally stole the premise to “Dr. In The House” and as far as I know never paid the origianl creators any residuals (cheap American bastards).
The fact that the events that take place in this exceedingly long film (4 hours & 44 minutes*) happen on St. Swithins day just made me long for someone (BBC America, are you listening?) to air reruns of ‘Dr. In The House’ just so something entertaining comes about from this film being made...
The film starts on July 15, 1988 – The day that Dexter (Sturgess) first remembers meeting Emma (Hathaway) even though, as she reminds him, they had met previously but he was too drunk to remember – or she just wasn’t sleezy enough to catch his eye...
The rest of the movie shows where these two characters are at in their lives every July 15th (the beloved St. Swithins Day)
In the beginning it is obvious that shy, demur Emma has a crush on Dexter, the arrogant womanizer but her intellect fights her desire to become one of his conquests – so they settle on being friends.
As the years roll on, Dexter becomes even more loutish and Emma gives up on her dreams and gradually becomes a permanent waitress in a Mexican restaurant. So I didn’t give a damn about Dexter, the jerk and only semi-cared about Emma only due to the fact that her life was so boring I was wondering why I was being forced to watch it play out.
Then something that should have livened things up happens – a young man named Ian comes to work at the English version of Jalesco’s & is immediately attracted to Emma. Ian’s goal in life was to become a stand-up comedian. Great! Someone to add some levity to this boring story – all right, Ian – makes us laugh, funny boy! . . . . Ian, we’re waiting . . . .
do or say something funny, would you please? . . . .
So Ian wants to be a comedian that doesn’t make people laugh. We are later told that the only time he made Emma laugh was when he fell down the stairs.
This is the funniest line in the movie. So I guess, in the end, after 15 years or so, Ian finally pays off...
Just when I thought, ‘although this movie is exceptionally dull, at least it isn’t annoying’, we then have to sit thru the most insufferable wedding/reception in the history of film.
So basically this story covers 20 years in the lives of two ordinary people leading dull, ordinary lives . . . this is the stuff that makes epics!
When Patricia Clarkson appeared as Dexter’s mother, I had hope that this film was going to spring to life – But no, her character is just as yawn inducing as all of the others...
Dexter does eventually turn his life around and becomes a decent human being – problem is, the writers don’t explain how he does this – just somewhere between 2003 and 2005, Dexter decides to stop being an a—hole. They also never mention what Dexter is doing for a living after making this epiphany. Lazy writing is the main culprit here - creating a wanna-be comedian who doesn't say anything funny is taking the easy way out; making the story only be told by what happens on every July 15th means we don't have to actually explain what happened the other 364 days of the year. This script was probably written in chicken poop...
Another odd, slightly annoying quirk is that Dexter clearly ages during the 20 year span of this tale, while his father looks the same age in 1988 as he does in 2008 (?)
“One Day” did set a personal record for the number of times I thought, “Jesus, when is this thing going to end?” (beating “Lord Of The Rings 3” by 1 ‘Jesus’)

(* may not be the actual running time, it just seemed that long)