The Love Punch

Art & Culture

I guess even National Treasures are allowed to make mistakes (see Colin Firth in the shortly-to-be-releasedArthur and Mike) but Emma Thompson really should have had second thoughts about signing up to appear in this lamebrain middle aged middle class comedy. Pierce Brosnan, of course, doesn't know any better.

They play a divorced couple who discover that the money they were planning to live on in their twilight years has been purloined. So naturally they team up, enlisting their old friends Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie (the unglamorous couple) to go to France and steal the money back, in the shape of a diamond. In other words, it's a heist movie, played as farce, with the inevitable consequence of the divorced couple rediscovering their mutual affection.

There is almost nothing good to say about this film. Brosnan has been trading on his roguish so-called charm for many years (it's a long time since he played an IRA hitman holding a gun on Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday) while ET may be the best thing since pumpernickel, but even she succumbs to the overall dumbness on display. She must like director Joel Hopkins, with whom she made the slightly superior Last Chance Harvey, but it's hard to see what appeals to a woman with such a dazzling repertoire.

British cinema seems to have decided that middlebrow is the way to go, but this film's brow is somewhere in the basement and is not worth your time and money. Trust me.

4/10