Dir: Dennis Dugan. Cast: Diane Keaton, Jeremy Irons, Maggie Grace, Diego Boneta, Andrew Bachelor, Andy Goldenberg, Dennis Staroselsky, Melinda Hill, Elle King. 12 cert, 96 mins Disasters: well, they said it. The new film from Dennis Dugan is a frighteningly inept stab at a romantic comedy in the Nancy Meyers style (The Holiday, It’s Complicated), centred on two accomplished but lovably ditzy career women, one of whom is played by Diane Keaton. But all the trademark pleasures of a Meyers production – beautiful people, gentle screwball antics, plushly aspirational settings – have been more or less turned on their head here: the characters are all irritating if not flatly revolting, the sets and costumes (Keaton’s wardrobe aside) exhibit a dire lack of taste, and every scene looks as if it was shot through a dirty window. The tale unfolds in the not-obviously romantic city of Boston, where florist Jessie (Maggie Grace) is trying to branch out into the wedding-planning business. This is proving tricky, since a video of her accidentally skydiving into a lakeside marriage ceremony and knocking the bride into the water has recently gone viral. But one day, her big break arrives: she is hired to organise the forthcoming nuptials of a young and handsome mayoral candidate (Dennis Staroselsky) instead of Lawrence Phillips (Jeremy Irons), the punctilious doyen of the town’s event-planning circuit. Phillips is a widower, though his friends have decided to set him up on a blind date with a twist: the twist being that his date is in fact blind. Enter Keaton, being dragged by her guide dog directly into a pyramid of champagne coupes that Lawrence and his staff have spent the morning painstakingly stacking. This is one of those romcoms in which the only way characters ever seem to meet is via some kind of physical collision. “I think the politically correct term is ‘visually impaired date,’” joshes Keaton’s Sara, who refuses to live as a victim, despite Dugan’s script painting her for the most part as a blundering oaf. In the face of such tenderness and charm, Irons’ frosty demeanour thaws almost instantly, and soon the pair are picnicking in the park together, while Sara tells him about her work as a photographer: essentially, she points her camera towards interesting noises and clicks, and later back at her apartment the pair will bond over a series of images which show her being run over by a delivery cyclist. (Really.)
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