About the movie
Last Chance Harvey
Rating: 
Cast:
Emma Thompson; Kathy Baker; James Brolin; Dustin Hoffman; Liane Balaban; Richard Schiff; Eileen Atkins
Directed by:
Joel Hopkins
On the web:
READER FEEDBACK
Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson keep ‘Last Chance Harvey’ real
In a strange way, the success of "Gran Torino" may be good news for "Last Chance Harvey."
Conventional box office wisdom holds that the ruling demographic wants young stories, but Clint Eastwood is still ruling the multiplex with an angry squint and a .45 automatic. So maybe's there's hope for a romantic comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.
Hoffman, 71, stars as Harvey Shine, a washed-up jingle composer just arrived in London for the wedding of his estranged daughter, whose arrangements seem designed to keep irascible Harvey as far away from the wedding party as possible.
Harvey feels the slight, which feeds his well-known urge to drink a little too much, not that he needs fresh prodding. He's about to lose his job, and the wedding only forces him to think about the many ways in which his life has gone wrong.
Harvey looks into the dark night of his soul at an vacant airport bar (is there a better place for it?), and has a chance encounter with a London lonelyhearts (Emma Thompson).
They share a drink, lunch, an afternoon, an evening, and the movie builds around the familiar idea that this chance meeting just may be life-altering for both of them.
There's something naggingly familiar about the scenarios conjured up by writer-director Joel Hopkins. He borrows from brief encounters, affairs to remember and reworks a big scene from "About Schmidt."
But it's well done by the two leads, who register as real enough to rescue the movie at almost every turn from mawkishness and predictability.
Sure, you can make jokes - it's "Before Sunrise," but After Geritol.
Just don't make them in front of Eastwood. *
Produced by T*m Perell and N*cola Usborne, wr*tten and d*rected by Joel Hopk*ns, mus*c by D*ckon H*nchl*ffe, d*str*buted by Overture F*lms.
