Being a big Anne Hathaway fan has cost me a little (see Bride Wars). But it’s also been a lot of fun and easy to maintain the crush with other things before and since. This trailer doesn’t do much to inspire me, but it does have a couple major pluses.
One, Patricia Clarkson; ’nuff said. But secondly, this is the sophomore effort from director Lone Scherfig, who’s first film, An Education slid easily into a decent spot in my top ten of 2009. So while this trailer doesn’t do too much to get me excited, the cast and director is more than enough to give the benefit of the doubt. Even if the story line does seem a bit gimmicky and simple, we shall see.
The trailer is tucked under the seat.
The trailer is overly sappy and spoils major plot points. Add to that Hathaway’s accent is all over the place. I feel this was a poorly made trailer. The movie is probably better than this… let’s hope.
Lone Scherfig directed the wonderful and dark rom-com WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF (which is in English) before An Education and a couple films before that, so this isn’t exactly a sophomore film, so this is not only NOT her sophomore film, it is not even her sophomore film in ENGLISH! She has been working for well over a decade in Feature films!
Italian For Beginners won the Silver Lion in Berlin, and that was even before WILBUR!
Indeed sir, I stand corrected! It’s weird she’s not credited on the Italian for Beginners picture.
I’d like to see the Shirley Henderson/Mads Mikkelson picture (*adds to Netflix queue*).
And looky there – Italian for Beginners is available as an Instant Watch.
Fair warning, Italian For Beginners is a Dogme95 movie, so don’t expect to to look all fancy and colourful like An Education!
I agree the trailer is waaaaay sappy And yeah, a little on the spoiler side of things. It could have used a few edits, particularly at the end there. Some really unnecessary scenes at the end of the trailer are dancing along spoiler territory.
I’m more surprised at the fact that I Sturgess and Hathaway seem to fit the roles well. When I was reading it I really couldn’t see them pulling it off but it looks like they might.
Don’t let the Dogme 95 label put you off Italian For Beginners though (not that it should, but I think some folks tend to immediately pigeonhole a Dogme 95 film). I really wanted to catch her film “Just Like Home” that was at TIFF a few years ago, but it didn’t get very good reviews. I’d still like to catch up with it at some point.
As for the trailer…Clarkson is always a reason to see any film and it might be good, but it certainly doesn’t grab you at any point and is overly sappy. I think I can pretty much map out the whole movie from that 2 and a half minutes…