Such a styrofoam heart and embarrassingly juvenile worldview guide
“Love, Rosie” is the latest pit stop for rising stars where Lily Collins play
as Rosie and Sam Claffin as Alex, childhood best friends who share a drunken
kiss a teenagers and spend their 20’s pining for each other across the Atlantic
as they cycle through doomed romances and in Rosie’s case, young motherhood.
Directed by German director, Christian Ditter in his English
language debut, it contains just one scene of believable emotion when Rosie
hugs Alex goodbye at the airport just before his Trans-Atlantic flight to
Harvard. Rosie is desperate to kiss him but too afraid to lean forward. Alex is
just as desperate for her to refrain though a small part of him wants it too.
Rosie and Alex’s love ages poorly in large part because the film
doesn’t let it protagonist grow up. Love Rosie is about fulfilling every
fantasy that it’s main character thought up as a wistful and naïve adolescent,
even after her life is upended by a teen pregnancy rather than about
discovering new priorities and goals as she matures.
Based on this novel by Cecilia Ahern that published when the author
was 23, as a busy single mother nearly every one of Rosie’s conversations with
her best friend Ruby still revolves around Alex. Adding to it, Rosie’s hopeful
wedding to her daughter Katie’s father, a man who she slept once with after a
school dance, begin with few melancholic break-up ballad.
Collins is perhaps the one note of grace, rising above the material
with an affable openness that breathes some freshness into the stale and sick
sweet preceding. But their age transformation from 18 to 1 30 year old is
wholly unconvincing as is that of Claffin who is betrayed by flitting from
gorgeous blonde to another one. The review of this movie, love is patient, as
the old saying goes, but love earns the patience.
