While I Give It A Year is silly and funny, it is by no means the most sophisticated romcom of the year.
Sofia Capel
What do you get when you take the writer of Borat, a handful of international comedy actors and attempt to apply romance to it? The answer: I Give It A Year.
The ill-fitted couple, Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall), get married after only seven months together and now they are standing in front of the biggest challenge of their lives: to manage the first year of living as husband and wife.
She – successful and elegant, him – socially awkward and slackish writer, start to hate each other straight after their honeymoon but are constantly reassured that this is what marriage is all about. On top of this they both start to develop feelings for other people – Nat for her hunky client Guy (Simon Baker) and Josh for his ex-girlfriend Chloe (Anna Faris).
Potty language and sexual innuendo
The humour is not of the most sophisticated kind and once again it becomes evident that all you need for a British audience to laugh is to throw in a bit of potty language and sexual innuendo now and again.
The film has quite a few straight-up, cringeworthy scenes of an older couple getting too cosy with each other. It also has Stephen Merchant rapping racist slurs while doing the robot dance.
What saves this film from being a complete catastrophe is its modern and realistic portrait of marriage. It is a romcom without the old-school notion that just because you decide to get married at some point, you are meant to be together for the rest of your life regardless of how unhappy you are.
Some funny scenes
I Give It A Year holds a lot of cheap laughs, some funny scenes and very little romance. It is okay to watch on a Sunday afternoon with a friend, but don’t watch it with your partner, unless you want to plant little seeds of love-doubt in their head.
I Give It A Year premiered yesterday and is directed by Dan Mazer.