I Give It a Year (2013)
Certified: 16
Duration: 97 minutes
Directed by: Dan Mazer
Starring: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris, Simon Baker, Minnie Driver, Stephen Merchant, Olivia Colman
KRS release

I Give It a Year is a romantic comedy that provides the usual clichés of the genre but it has an inner twist that makes the film quite entertaining.

It opens with a wedding: the ceremony that usually marks the culmination of a romantic film, but that here marks the start of roller-coaster ride for a happy couple.

This sequence immediately gives you the feeling that the rules of the genre will be changed.

Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne play Josh and Nat, two sweethearts who get married in a fairy tale-like wedding after a lightning-fast love affair.

On getting married, incompatibility issues start to crop up and both have to deal with a number of temptations.

Nat’s client, Guy (Simon Baker), gives her something to think about, while Chloe (Anna Faris), an ex-girlfriend of Josh, is back in the scene.

Thus the newlyweds decide to give the relationship a year and work at it. The problem is that even their jobs – a writer who works at home and a PR executive – make their marriage more difficult.

The film marks the directorial debut of Dan Mazer, the scriptwriter of Borat and long-time collaborator of Sacha Baron Cohen. It benefits greatly from the pairing of Spall and Byrne: she has a nice, tangible screen presence and acts as a counterweight to Spall’s laid-back charmful character.

The film also has two good supporting roles: Faris has a scene in a bedroom which is over-the-top wild while Driver’s role as Nat’s sister is a show stealer.

Stephen Merchant is in his usual comic mode while Olivia Colman also pulls her socks up to deliver the smiles and laughs.

It is, in fact, the performances that push the movie forward and raise it a notch or two above the crowd. Meanwhile, the cast seems to be having jolly good fun in this Brit affair.

The film also has its fair share of juvenile humour, with the digital frame sequence being a very good case in point.

The way the film handles the ‘they lived happily ever after’ theme also gives the film added spice.

This is another picture that like the best film so far in the slowly growing ‘anti-rom comedy’ genre, 500 Days of Summer, brings out the best romance when it is not trying to be romantic at all.