If a fire were to burn your home quickly, what would you take with you in 60 seconds? This is the question that drives Anna (Amy Adams) to ponder her superficial life as a real estate stager in Boston, involved with a cardiologist, Jeremy (Adam Scott), four years running and no marriage proposal in sight.
Superficial might be too quick a word to judge her with. Anna stages not just empty apartments so they sell quickly, but also her life to appear coiffed when really inside she’s driven by the fear of guessing wrong. She learned to protect herself against uncertainty while navigating as a youth through her father’s hapless business decisions. Her father was always living by the phrase, “Oh well, everything will just work out.”
So, she evolves intro a successful control queen who treats friends and her clueless boyfriend with needy honesty. Without them by her side, she might feel like losing control and this means she maintains the status quo. Until one day, ironically, her father arrives late to a seedy bar just so they can spend some time together and reminds his daughter of Grandma Jane asking her future husband to marry her–inspired by Irish tradition that as the leap year arrives every fourth year on February 29, women have the chance to pop the question. And so Anna flops herself on a plane to find her man–Jeremy, who traveled to Ireland for a conference.
Problem is she finds the wrong one in Declan (Matthew Goode), a jaded fellow who owns and now just bartends a classic Irish pub because his chef aspirations disappeared when his girlfriend left with his business partner. In walks Anna to this moody place looking for a taxi to escort her to Dublin where her fiance awaits. One storm already downed her airplane and then a fisherman-boat-ride-for-hire. She is stranded. And so these two pair up since Declan needs to earn the exuberant taxi fare she is offering to pay an old kitchen equipment bill the local thug intends to collect on.
The storyline does not woe you in complexity, but I will say this good-old fashioned predictable romantic-comedy felt wonderful to watch. Why? Because for the $8.75 matinee price, you could watch an uptight urban woman fall in love–with the incredible nature around her on the Aran Islands (three small ones off the coast of Ireland). We see a narrow road where only one Mini car fits and that’s good enough because probably one car travels down the lane in an hour. Green hills unfold one after the other. Stunning coastal sunsets over those amazing Irish cliffs, romance the viewer entirely. In one scene, Anna stands with her potential beau and stares out from the castle where they climbed up to and witnesses a stunning hillside rolling forever green and into the ocean view.
Also, Irish weather notoriously changes in a blink, so Anna experiences sudden hail that drives them both inside to a church wedding. Or rain storms from no where drench her quickly. Under the influence of nature’s colors and weather, Anna’s tightly controlled emotions finally start to loosen. Yes, she agrees to marry the conservative Jeremy and return home to Boston, where they have been accepted into a prestigious by-invitation-only condominium.
But at their party to show off the new digs, Anna learns through Jeremy’s bragging that he asked her to marry him because that was the final clincher to receive the green light on the apartment. A calculated marriage proposal for sure. So, she pulls the fire alarm. And while everyone scrambles out, her fiance grabs all the material goodies he can: camcorder, lap top, i-phone, and more.
In contrast, Anna simply disappears and winds up on a plane back to a small Irish village. She sits at a table in the now bustling dining room of Declan’s pub, and when he appears, she makes a proposal. She asks him if he would like to join her in making no plans together. She has changed enough to trust uncertainty. The moment is sweet, and I believe–real. We plan and plan and plan and plan–even the spark of romance. How can you plan and control those moments?
This is a gushy film that doesn’t completely falsely sugar-coat Hollywood style an early romance. Declan has been burned and so is wise to life. He appreciates cooking good food from the bounty of a garden outside his front door, and he shares this slow-food appreciation with Anna. In turn, she starts to slow down too. The beautiful Irish nature surrounding them both creates a thoughtful presence for them to open up and take new emotional risks.
He questions Anna’s motive to ask Jeremy to marry her; he laughs at her that if anyone wished to marry anyone that after four years the question would already have been asked since it’s the most important one to ask in a lifetime. In his questioning of Anna, she can finally start to see herself. Yet the Irish environment stands as a third character to open up their romance as they turn to simple beauty blanketing them as a way to heal and change, so they can finally join each other after she says yes to his marriage proposal. See? Didn’t take lucky leap year magic at all.
