It's been a rough year for Carter (Cox) after breaking up with his girlfriend Kelly (Wallis) then losing his job. His brother (Cooke) is tired of him sleeping on his floor and throws him out. But before moving in with Aunt Miriam (Parfitt), he decides to contact Kelly, although he doesn't have her number. As luck would have it, he runs into her actor brother Aaron (Schneider) on the Tube. Aaron asks for a favour in return, leading to an inadvertent baby kidnapping and several chance encounters with a woman (Whittaker) he met that morning.

If all of these far-fetched coincidences weren't bad enough, the script turns Carter into such a dolt that we wonder how he ever held a job down at all. Cox plays him with a disarming helplessness that begins as goofy then turns cloying, but he manages hold our sympathies even though Carter keeps making painfully stupid decisions along the way. In that sense Cooke is more resonant and likeable, because at least we know he's just a harmless cad.

Other characters are schizophrenic for comedic effect. Whittaker's sudden interest in Carter is believable at first, but grows increasingly irrational. Schneider's vain actor seems to be a bipolar paranoid egomaniac, so it's no wonder that his ex (Shale) had served him with a restraining order. But then none if these people are properly developed in the script; they're all essentially comedy types who exist only to serve a pointed purpose.

Which is basically the problem with the entire film. Nothing about it feels organic at all, including it's circular use of London geography. It's nicely shot and edited, with a bouncy mood that at least holds our attention. But writer-director Wilcox really needed to get a few fresh eyes in the script before he shot the film, because its contrivances are so slack that we're actually hoping Carter suffers an unspeakable indignity in the end.

themes, language

2.Oct.13 lff