Few kinds of movies are as grating as bad movie comedy. Other styles can survive being off-key, but a comedy that whiffs is excruciating.
Case in point: “A Good Year,” which labors under a double whammy. Its director has no funnybone, and its leading man is more comfortable throwing punches than throwing jokes.
That actor is Russell Crowe, who is otherwise a very gifted performer. But you know he’s wrong from the early moments of “A Good Year,” when he tries to impersonate a light, breezy style as a London stock trader. (I’m just guessing about that job: He’s one of those people who shouts “Buy!” and “Sell!” while he watches numbers go across a computer screen.) His character, Max, is a charmer, a womanizer, a cad.
Crowe can do many things and make you believe them: box, sail a ship, be a mathematical genius. But he can’t be Hugh Grant, and that’s what this movie wants. Comedy is hard, folks.
At the same time he goes in his employer’s doghouse, Max inherits an estate in Provence. He goes to France to sell the place, but after a few days he falls under the sway of the sun and the wine.
Well, sure. The ending of this movie is pretty well in view from its opening moments, as I assume it also was in the novel by Peter Mayle (the author of the “Year in Provence” books).
Max stands to inherit the rambling estate from his late uncle, played in flashbacks by Albert Finney. But suddenly there’s a young woman (the appealing Aussie Abbie Cornish) who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of the late owner. There’s also a subplot about the mysterious wine grown on the grounds of the property.
The director is Ridley Scott, who guided Crowe so brawnily in “Gladiator” and is best known for decidedly serious films such as “Blade Runner” and “Black Hawk Down.” His approach to comedy tends to be leering and overstated, and his approach to romance makes you feel sorry for leading lady Marion Cotillard, whose body is the subject of much ogling.
Scott always has a talent for arranging things in a widescreen frame, so the Provence estate looks fantastic. “A Good Year” is all right as a travelogue. But this means the movie has virtually no suspense. Even if Max is the biggest jerk in the world, he would have to be insane to turn his back on this sun-kissed slice of heaven.
Russell Crowe stars in “A Good Year.”
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