A Good Year Review
It's not entirely clear what director Ridley_Scott and star Russell_Crowe were trying to accomplish with A Good Year. If the frequent collaborators wanted to prove they were capable of making a sentimental comedy, they've done that well enough. But A Good Year is so different from their typical interests that it begs the question: what drew them to the project in the first place? Crowe plays a merciless British trader discovering his humanity among the vineyards and local color of Southern France, and he does so with his usual competence -- even showing a knack for physical comedy. But such a frivolous diversion, from two such serious heavyweights, feels even less substantial than it would in other hands, almost like they're slumming. As Crowe drives through the countryside in a comically small Smart car, needling French bicyclists by shouting out "Lance_Armstrong!" and flipping them the bird, it seems like he and Scott are stealing pages from the playbooks of other broad culture-clash comedies, which audiences might have assumed were beneath them. They've made a perfectly decent addition to a genre in which "perfectly decent" is usually good enough. One good reason to see A Good Year is the charming performance by future Oscar winner Marion_Cotillard as Crowe's love interest -- even though, it should be said, he doesn't do enough to deserve her, and her long disappearances from the narrative call into question screenwriter Marc_Klein's structural instincts. While viewers will undoubtedly find themselves seduced by the marvelous French countryside, they shouldn't use that as a reason to over-praise this particular film's vintage. Derek Armstrong, Rovi
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