‘LOVE, ROSIE’ They’re star-crossed, and we don’t care
A good screen romance frustrates us, throws up comical or tragic obstacles that keep the lovers apart and then provides a lovely release when those obstacles are surmounted.
But British romantic comedy “Love, Rosie” overdoes all that. It would be a maddening experience, thanks to the many ways the hero devastates the poor heroine, if we cared enough to get mad.
Lily Collins plays the MPAA rating: R (for language and some sexual content) Running time: 1:42 Opens: Friday the first boy she held hands with, practically her intended since they were in elementary school. In a yearslong flashback, we see the miscommunications, unstated intentions, the weddings and funerals that have kept these best friends from being more than that.
There was the high school party where she had to get her stomach pumped, and the night she pretty much dared the virginal Alex to ask the flirty blond classmate out. He did and lost his virginity. Rosie, meanwhile, had a sexual encounter with a condom accident.
Their big plans, to move from England to Boston — him to med school, her to train to be a hotel manager — come to nothing. She can’t bear to tell him she’s pregnant.
“Love, Rosie” tracks them over a star-crossed dozen years (only the child ages) of bad timing, failed outside relationships, hard feelings and wedding toasts that reveal a bit more than the toaster should about his or her feelings for the other.
Collins (“Mirror Mirror,” “The Mortal Instruments”) and Claflin, of the “Hunger Games” franchise, do well by the mooning over each other across a crowded dance floor stuff. But they have to keep us believing in “the dream” and hoping for their romance. They don’t.
There’s a little funny business, here and there, some of it provided by the “funny best friend” (Suki Waterhouse). A trip to America changes Alex and his way of communicating with Rosie: “Can we just forget the psychobabble and talk like people?”
But the watery chemistry and the on-the-nose choice of pop tunes to illustrate moments (“Alone Again, Naturally” turns up, naturally) keep “Love, Rosie” in the “Maybe we’d be better off as friends” zone.
English