Leap Year

Rating: **1/2

To get through 99 per cent of the romantic comedies out there, you have to accept a couple of things. First, that the girl at the centre of the story is always fastidious or precise in a manner that’s measurable. Second, the man she’s with and/or interested is almost always bad for her. Third, the new man that she thinks is bad for her almost always ends up being the one beneath his layers of gristle and/or cynical detachment. Additionally, the story nearly always begins with some kind of ridiculous conceit: a deadline, a road trip or a mission. The talented few are the ones that can take these concepts and wrangle them in such a way to make the experience bearable, if not enjoyable.

Leap Year has a deadline, a road trip and a mission as the fastidious and precise Anna (Amy Adams) follows her foolish father’s advice to chase after her boyfriend to Dublin in order to propose to him on Leap Day. According to an Irish legend, which may or may not be an actual Irish legend, a woman can propose to a man on the 29th of February and he has to accept. The powerful bonding magic of Leap Day is just what Anna needs when Jeremy (Adam Scott), her boyfriend of four years, fails to propose after they buy a swank Boston apartment. Anna, desperate to seal the deal goes by land, sea and air to Dublin to meet up with Jeremy at a medical conference so that she can surprise propose to him on the 29th.

Naturally, following traditional rom-com conceits, Jeremy is a borderline jerk that appears only mildly interested in Anna, that is to say when he shows any interest in her at all. It should go without saying that the romantic intentions of any man that would show his girlfriend photos of open-heart surgery via his mobile device over dinner should be questioned, and questioned thoroughly. As to what Anna sees in Jeremy is never really explained, but I suppose when you invest four years in a man, simply dumping him would be like burning your own house down. Fortunately, while on her trip, Anna gets diverted by bad weather, and fate drops her at the small pub owned by Declan (Matthew Goode), an Irish bloke that prefers a tall pint of Guinness to a high-maintenance woman.

Anna and Declan’s excellent adventure across the Irish countryside is the typical, movie couples’ journey from open hostility to flirty animosity to begrudging companionship to actual friendship and romantic realization. Screenwriting Mad Libs is saved by the chemistry between Adams and Goode who snipe at each other in a believably loving way. You root for them and get somehow invested in the story despite the fact that the plot is superficial and obvious. Goode’s Declan is just the right kind of scruffy ne’er-do-well and Anna is just prissy enough that you don’t find the characters completely annoying. Which just leaves poor Jeremy, but you can live with the other man being a clueless buffoon in this instance.

The bottom line is that Leap Year in one of those rare romantic comedies where you can live with the predestined nature of the plot and the overly conceptualized characters and just take it all in stress free. Maybe it’s the season and the past several weeks of high concept, highly significant filmmaking, but there’s a simplicity to Leap Year that’s charming rather than annoying. Rather than rage against the ridiculousness of the plot or complain about the overly stereotypical nature of the battling old Irish men trading trivia at Declan’s pub, you can just sit back and enjoy. And in this way alone, Leap Year’s got the luck of the Irish working for it.