One Day

After the poor trailers and even poorer reviews, I wasn't expecting anything from this film but the interesting premise still motivated me to watch it. As anticipated, it was a trainwreck essentially from the start. For starters, it's structured all wrong; it feels so rushed through in a large part, with a lot of the focus only being on three or four days over the course of two decades. Of course with that being said, it never even feels like two decades have past. They change the actors looks slightly and I like that they didn't try to go overboard with the makeup and everything, but they look too old at the beginning and way too young at the end. What's worse though is that it doesn't feel like the time progresses at all. It feels like you're watching a day-by-day story as opposed to one that passes over years. I think the structure messes this up, but I also have to put fault on the actors for this. In the later years they should feel like the same people who have lived the experiences we've seen throughout the film, but they really don't. It's like they read the scenes for each new year and decided to play the characters differently in each year. I really wish that Sturgess would live up to the potential I think he has, but he keeps choosing awful roles and as his counterpoint Anne Hathaway is as awful as ever. People put way too much focus on judging accents as the key to a performance, but her accent is so off the charts absurd here it borders on hilarious. She goes through at least three different accents, just in one scene. An interesting premise, but practically everyone dropped the ball here. A real shame from Lone Scherfig, coming off the sensational An Education.