I Give It A Year Review

I am in this movie and have an incredibly important role; I am both office extra 47 and Christmas party club dancer number 3, dancing in a scene that has been cut.

I fear my “Magic Mike” style moves may have forced them to remove an entire scene, so let me just take this opportunity to say to Dan Mazer, Mr Director Sir, I am sorry.

The experience was awesome though. For one day I got to deliver a speech to a board of directors, only said directors were a bunch of off screen lamps.

If you look carefully as Nat, played by the immaculately coiffed Rose Byrne, enters her office you can see me; I’m the one who looks awkward, out of control and fat.

Turns out the camera really does add ten pounds after all, all of it, magically, to your love handles.

Blink and you’ll miss me, but don’t worry as you can see me pouring a glass of water in a different sweater a few short minutes later.

But I suppose you’re more interested in hearing about I Give It A Year, which is the perfect film to watch if you want to explore our mainstream media’s continued suppression of women, the marriage myth and how women are still seen as property; only now with an appealing trade in option.

The plot; Nat and Josh, played by Rafe Spall, are wildly in love.

They fell into this predicament rather unexpectedly and within barely any time at all via one of those marvellous montage tricks, they’re at their wedding day and from the beginning it’s awkward; the priest nearly vomits on the bride before Josh embarks on one of those awful comedy marriage dances.

We then jump forward to Nat and Josh back from their honeymoon and they’ve already fallen out of love and into loathe with each other.

What makes things worse is that Josh is clearly in love with his old flame, Chloe played by Anna Faris wearing something that looks an awful lot like road kill as a wig.

Josh and Chloe both love granola, they both like charities and even laugh at each other’s silly superhero jokes; it’s obviously love, even if they can’t quite see it.

At the same time, Nat has clearly fallen for Guy a client she is working on an ad campaign for. They’re both breathtakingly beautiful, they both come from wealthy families and they both enjoy wearing designer labels.

Sounds like a recipe for love to me.

Yet, unwilling to end their clearly disastrous relationship, Nat and Josh continue to try and battle their way towards being married for one year.

Will Nat and Josh admit that they loathe each other, or will they end up with the person who physically, socially and intellectually simply isn’t there equal?

I Give It A Year fails to engage the viewer right off, by speeding through the decline of the relationship in the opening credits to dive straight into two-dimensional comedy gag’s and sketches.

Women are treated as if they are male fashion accessories rather than people. A modern film attempting to follow in the footsteps of female empowered comedies like Bridesmaids shouldn’t trade on misogynistic, archaic and degrading portrayals of women.

I laughed a lot when Steven Merchant and Olivia Colman showed up in their supporting roles, but in general I Give It A Year is poorly paced, illogical and rather sexist.

In fact, the only thing that could have saved Dan Mazer’s new film was some dangerous dance moves from a Magic Mike loving extra.

Shelton Lindsay

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February 2013
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