MARTHA MEET FRANK, DANIEL AND LAURENCE 

INTRODUCTION: So I find myself reviewing another romantic comedy. Its been a bad week for me. OK, perhaps I'm fated to watching these things. Rom-coms tend to have a fairly clearly defined target audience, I won't offend all the sports loving male romantics out there by stereotyping it as a women's thing. If you're one of this target group and hence like this sort of thing you're probably going to see it anyway, if you're not and you don't like this sort of thing then you won't, nothing I could possibly say will sway you either way, but I'll give it a go anyway. 

SYNOPSIS: Martha meets Frank, Daniel and Laurence. 

REVIEW: OK maybe the plot isn't as complicated as "Sliding Doors" but it does share one key feature, it is that it seems impossible to tell a romantic story in any sort of linear fashion. First we had the parallel lives of Gwenyth in "Sliding Doors" and here we have a story told in flashback from the various characters' viewpoints (there's originality then). We follow the arrival of Martha (Potter) in London and her extraordinarily co-incidental encounters with the three men, resulting in a love that threatens to tear asunder the life-long bond between these three childhood friends. 

The film attempts to break free of the standard rom-com constraints by making all the characters fundamentally unlikeable, hmm maybe this wasn't deliberate. In place of the warm, charming and entertaining James (John Hannah) of "Sliding Doors" we have instead three potential suitors Frank (Hollander); the potentially psychopathic, embittered, out of work actor, Daniel (Sewell); the irksome record producer and Laurence (Fiennes); the whinging Bridge instructor (is that a real job?). It is difficult to watch them, hard to feel sympathy for them and impossible to understand what Martha could see in any of them, but then again Martha is a stereotypical ditzy American blonde bimbette. Fortunately the great Ray Winston (Nil By Mouth, Quadrophenia & Robin of Sherwood) turns up to put in a bizarre and potentially film saving cameo. 

Our old friend fate/coincidence raises its ugly head, in a major role, once again, "In a city of 10 million people, what are the chances of three friends meeting and falling in love with the same woman on the same day?" the advertising blurb asks us, err well none what so-ever I am forced to respond, so why make a movie with such a far-fetched concept? I guess that's why the movie failed to engage me. The biggest problem with this film was probably the reviewer, I'm not a romantic, I don't believe in fate and I don't believe everything works out in the end, not even in Reykjavik. 

Quirky British rom-com with an American in a lead role, we've been here Before, right? Sometimes I wonder why I bother and so must the makers. Despite a major advertising campaign this film has failed to generate any real interest, even in those that go to see it, it is perhaps indicative of this malaise that the Birmingham preview of the film was relegated to Odeon 8, which is the cinematic equivalent to a portable TV with a couple of deck chairs set up in front of it, due to the fact that it is a portable TV with a couple of deck chairs set up in front of it. Bad timing is probably the ultimate marketing fault here, lost in the clamour for "Sliding Doors" this film never really stood a chance, but perhaps it'll be a sleeper popping up again in a months time when the "Sliding Doors" hysteria dies down. 

It's not a bad movie, it was just fated to get a bad review. 

Mutts Rating: *** 

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