It is a truth universally acknowledged that the trampy heroine of any modern female-slanted romcom must make Bridget Jones look like Grace Kelly by comparison. And while Leah McKendrick’s feature d…
That face will be there to remind Nellie that, contrary to her belief, the 30s aren’t “just the 20s but with money,” they are the gateway to the 40s, the 50s and forever.
Having decided on a course of action, Nellie decides to get back into the dating game, calling up exes and various randoms for barroom hook-ups that throw up funny moments, like the shifty guy with an ankle tag who flees when his parole officer calls . Nellie also begins to dread visits to her parents’ home, where her loving but tactless father Richard is baffled by the sudden onset of stasis in his daughter’s life – and talks about it a lot.
It’s a good set-up for a comedy, with its girl-power sentiments about single-parenting and putting one’s emotional affairs in order. But the setup is really all there is, with no distinctive game plan other than to see Nellie get to the finish line with her treatment. And though McKendrick is a talented writer, she is likely to be a divisive presence, even for receptive audiences.
A key scene happens towards the end when Nellie attends a support group for the bereaved parents of miscarried babies and has been stood up the friend whose hand she is there to hold. It’s a schmaltzy scene that McKendrick skewers when Nellie gets up to leave, revealing her true situation and clumsily joking that she hopes to enjoy “the joys of miscarriage” herself one day.
It’s perhaps because the snark is so much original than the otherwise predictable emotional story beats that moments like this are so frustrating, and, indeed,ends with a nagging sense of seriously unrealized potential, despite the artificial whoo-let’s-have-a-party sugar high that’s slathered over the end credits.
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