Vague approximation of a guy meets sketchy notion of an intelligent woman -- and then they spend two decades circling each other for no apparent reason. It’s not exactly “boy meets girl,” but that’s the best that the new romance “One Day,” based on a bestselling novel that I have not read, has to offer.
Author David Nicholls may have made these characters more substantial on the page, but in the big-screen adaptation (which he wrote), the leads are so lightweight and barely-there that a stiff breeze in the projection booth could make them disappear entirely.
And since the whole movie is about the two of them and whether they ever get together, that’s kind of a problem.
On July 15, 1988, Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) hook up at the end of a drunken night celebrating their graduation from college. (Sorry, university: They’re supposed to be from the U.K., although if you didn’t get that from Hathaway’s vague accent, you’re not alone.)
What’s supposed to be a booty call gets terribly awkward -- she puts Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution” on as mood music, he gets dressed to leave while she’s prepping in the bathroom -- and then leads to what will become a lifelong friendship.
And so, we check in with these two every July 15 and observe the passage of time and the ups and downs of their lives.
Emma spins her wheels waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant and dating an untalented would-be stand-up comic (Rafe Spall), while Dex becomes a D-bag television personality and all-around shallow jerk. (One of the laziest tropes in contemporary fiction is to make one of your characters become famous, and “One Day” does it twice, as Emma eventually blossoms into a successful author of young-adult fiction, complete with Audrey Hepburn–esque makeover.)
Along the way, characters die, relationships begin and fall apart, but Emma and Dex somehow stay close and keep their unrequited love burning between them. But why, exactly?
“One Day” never bothers to spell out for us just who these people are, what they want, or why they do what they do. So it’s next to impossible to get revved up about their feelings for each other, except for the fact that Emma and Dex are the principal characters, and they’re being played by attractive, charismatic performers.
Nicholls’ wafer-thin screenplay eventually beats down both Hathaway and Sturgess, who try desperately to give this couple something approximating depth.
And the whole same-time-next-year business -- which must have worked on the page, since the novel was huge with the book-club set -- winds up feeling gimmicky and pointless.
Jumping through the turn of the 21st century was no doubt lots of fun for the hair and wardrobe department -- Hathaway spends the first chunk of the film being frumped up with unflattering glasses and outfits, but Sturgess goes from posh preppy to ’90s fashion victim, sporting an array of looks you’d prayed would never return.
