I've not read the book, I've not read any discussions about Ann Hathaway and accent-gate so I came to One Day with a clean sheet of paper. What I wanted was something warm, romantic, funny and a bit sad and that is pretty much what I got.
For those unfamiliar, One Day tells the story of Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) who meet at University. Emma fancies Dexter but other than a brief, what can best be described as a liaison, they become friends. The film follows the two catching up with them on the same day every year as they go through their lives with all its joys and disappointments - the jobs, the success, the failure the loves and the losses. It's a sort of will they or won't they get together but more than that. Although it steers closely to the cliff of cliche at times it never quite goes over the edge.
Both principles put in good performances. Sturgess has the hardest job of making Dexter an at times arrogant sod, like-able and does it with twinkle and charm. And the accent thing. It's not so much Hathaway's Yorkshire accent I had a problem with, more the fact that it only seemed to come out on odd words or sentences like she'd suddenly remembered she had to do a Yorkshire accent. The rest of the time she does an adequate non-region specific English accent.
One Day could have been a film that I hated but I really enjoyed it. I laughed and I cried, what more can you want on a rainy afternoon? It ain't going to win any awards but I'm going to give it 65%.
Think is one of those films that the audience likes more than the critics as it's got a user rating of 63% on IMDb with a Metacritic rate of 48%. On Rotten Tomatoes it is a similar story with 69% from the audience and 37% from the critics.
* Haven't found the British trailer yet and I refuse to post the American version with the awful voice over, if anyone finds it please let me know. There is something about the sound of it that just makes me recoil from a film mainly because I just think of all the parodies.
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