2.5 stars (out of 5)
As ‘Chick Flicky’ as ‘Chicky Flicks’ get, this shamelessly manipulative filming of Jojo Moyes’ novel and screenplay is unmitigated female-friendly fantasy fluff, even if it cheesily flirts with the idea of dealing with ‘serious subjects’ and theatre and TV director Thea Sharrock mistakenly thinks it somehow isn’t a load of goofy, gooey claptrap.
Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke is preposterously icky-nice as Lou Clark, a 26 year old somewhere in the UK (Wales, it seems) who’s desperate for a job after losing a café gig and is somehow assigned a well-paid position looking after a quadriplegic named Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) who lives in a big castle, no less (actually Pembroke Castle). Inadequately answered questions abound, such as, just for starters, why didn’t she have to undertake a degree as a carer? Ah right, nurse Nathan (Aussie Stephen Peacocke) looks after all the difficult stuff. And why would Will’s parents (Janet McTeer and Charles Dance) hire her on the spot, when she’s totally unqualified and inexperienced and has a huge smile that suggests dangerous emotional problems? Oops, sorry, right, it’s a movie.
Will is nasty to her for some time, but she sticks around and soon his meanness and crankiness evaporate, they’re having sun-dappled getting-to-know you sessions, as they stroll/wheel around the grounds and Lou’s dingbat boyfriend Patrick (Matthew Lewis) senses trouble. And then, damn it, they’re truly swooning for each other, as Lou decides to use his family’s major money and all her feminine wiles to make him change his mind about taking a drastic course of action, and those nagging questions again arise. Like what if his parents weren’t incredibly rich? What if he was more severely incapacitated and the family couldn’t afford a nurse and Lou was forced to do, you know, what carers are actually supposed to do? And what if he wasn’t a gorgeous hunk? Ah, okay, got it, movie, right.
Another in a long, long, looooooooong line of ‘Women’s Pictures’, ‘Chick Flicks’ or whatever you choose to call them, carefully manufactured to have legions of lady punters in tears even before the pre-film trailers are finished, this probably isn’t quite as repellent as some and there are vaguely interesting and certainly controversial complications late on in the action. And Emilia and Sam are so awfully cute you’ll probably get sucked in by it all anyway, and come out blubbering like a baby, desperate for a cuddle and hitting seek.com for similar jobs in the greater Adelaide area.
I Wake Up Screening 