ONE DAY (OR FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS)

This weary, boring movie starring the good- looking Anne Hathaway as “Emma" a rather plain (proof of my mantra that no matter the beauty every woman needs makeup to enhance it) nerdy, needy type;  and Jim Sturgess as  “Dexter”  also pretty,  was an endurance test for the audience. I envied the fortunate few who slept and snored through the tedium; their dreams, even nightmares, had to be more entertaining.

This English couple meet in college; she is smitten, and he is a feckless, physically appealing jerk whose only talent lies between the sheets.  The crime of “One Day” (that seemed to last a lifetime) was that the principals were so blandly uninteresting, dull to the point of excruciation; lazy, devoid of ambition; the situation, not the individual, in control. She is an aspiring poet , never composing a word, waitressing in a Mexican Restaurant while he is an inebriated idiot hosting a facile television show.  Actually, it took them almost twenty years to realize they were made for each other.

It took me twenty minutes to acknowledge I suffered a monstrous lacuna,  gap, lapse of discretion.

To occupy my mind while agonizing through this platitudinous flick, two old movies surfaced: “Love Story”, 1970, with Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neal and even better,”Same Time, Next Year”, 1978, with Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda. These are winners and unlike “One Day” reside comfortably in the memory bank forever.

ONE STAR!

For Now……..Peneflix