Movies to Avoid! - Leap Year (2010)

When reviewing The Last Right, I realized I had never actually seen all of Leap Year. But I had still made an unfavorable comparison between it and the last right.

Perhaps I was being unfair. After all as Mark Kermode always says “you cannot judge a movie without having seen it”. It might be amazing. So, I watched it.

All cards on the table I did go in with preconceptions. I thought this is going to be really quite annoying from an Irish point of view. However, i reckoned it probably was a quite sweet and romantic movie, that works if you ignore the patronizing view of Ireland.I was half right.

I have some questions:

• Could they not find a map of Ireland?
• Clearly it was filmed on location so how is it that they didn’t meet a single Irish person they could base even just one realistic character on
• If they couldn’t find an Irish actor for the role (Fassbender is actually from this area for Pete’s sake) could they not have found one of the many thousands of British actors who can actually do an Irish accent
• Was the aim to skirt any accusations of outdated sexist attitudes by portraying  a low opinion of both men and women? (Although fair play to you , you still managed the sexism )
• Was there a special Oscar that year for most outdated stereotype in a movie that the producers had their eye on?
• How did nobody on set take Mathew Goode aside and explain “that’s not how you say Fionn Mac Cumhaill”? They could have just tried Finn McCool, I would have been happy with that. If they can say it right,  here…why not a guy from Kerry ?
• Who has an outdoor wedding in Tipperary in February? Or at any time of the year for that matter.
• Could the non-linear time travelling aliens in Arrival not warned Amy Adams about this?
• Look I am sure nobody meant to make a bad movie it just didn’t come out like they hoped. But why over 2 hours long? Toy Story, This is Spinal Tap and High Noon are all an hour shorter!
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It was the first time I have ever watched an Irish based movie hoping for some leprechauns or a talking potato to turn up to raise the intellectual content. Once every four years is far too often for this movie.

Mind you, it is still at least five times less insulting than Tommy Lee Jones’s character in Blown Away.