Imagine Me And You (DVD)

...get hurt?

Imagine "Notting Hill" with lesbians instead of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Congratulations, you've just found what "Imagine Me and You" is aspiring to. Writer/director Ol Parker's film is as unremittingly bland and upper middle-class as Curtis' work, but lacks the spark of originality and sense of the absurd Curtis clings to. Otherwise it is a virtual carbon copy of The "Four Weddings" originator's ...
...so passionless it's hard to imagine her falling in love with one person, let alone two. The love triangle also fails because there is no tension; Heck is pretty much the architect of the demise of his own marriage. He spends most of his time pushing the two women together for no discernible reason. The pacing is too slow to keep an audience interested and it seems an age between the initial meeting of the two women and the obligatory cheesy ending. ... more

Rachel is at the church marrying Heck when she first lays eyes on florist Luce. When they bump into each other at the reception later there is an undeniable spark. Heck unwittingly brings the pair closer when he tries to set Luce up with his best mate Coop. But can the women admit their feelings for each other when so many other people stand to get hurt?

Imagine "Notting Hill" with lesbians instead of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Congratulations, you've just found what "Imagine Me and You" is aspiring to. Writer/director Ol Parker's film is as unremittingly bland and upper middle-class as Curtis' work, but lacks the spark of originality and sense of the absurd Curtis clings to. Otherwise it is a virtual carbon copy of The "Four Weddings" originator's work. From the Primrose Hill setting and the privileged background of the characters to the annoying best friend and random assortment of sight gag bit-parters it all feels highly derivative. There's even a peripheral character suffering from mental illness (though that clears up pretty quickly). But Parker lacks Curtis' comic timing and as a result many gags misfire and the character comedy is limp and uninspiring. The majority of the writing is trying too hard to be funny; no matter what the situation, everyone has a retort lined up, but they are too considered to feel natural or spontaneous. This is also true of the storyline, where meetings are too fortuitous and feel more like contrivance than coincidence. This means that many of the characters function solely as plot devices, guiding the leads to the inevitable and utterly predictable happy ending. The only time the comedy hits the nail on the head is during a shopping trip where Heck and Rachel bump into Luce and friend, each pairing discussing the other in bold terms.

There is virtually no character development and it is taken as read that we will recognise the stereotypes and somehow bond with them. The only problem is that none of the protagonists feels believable because they are too briefly sketched. There is nothing to the central relationships and Rachel is so passionless it's hard to imagine her falling in love with one person, let alone two. The love triangle also fails because there is no tension; Heck is pretty much the architect of the demise of his own marriage. He spends most of his time pushing the two women together for no discernible reason. The pacing is too slow to keep an audience interested and it seems an age between the initial meeting of the two women and the obligatory cheesy ending. Though the film is only a shade over and hour-and-a-half, it seems much longer. The "grand" finale is so hackneyed that it will make you wish for the horror of Andie MacDowell's vomit-fest from "Four Weddings" ("Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed"). Anything that features a singing bicycle courier in a lame attempt to shoehorn in the titular song is just trying too hard.

Parker's direction is workmanlike, but too stolid to draw you into the story he's trying to tell. Anyone hoping for a lurid portrayal of lipstick lesbianism will be fresh out of luck. The major factor in the lack of sex and even romance is a complete absence of chemistry between leading ladies. It doesn't help that there's a similar lack of sexual chemistry between leading man and lady. But poor casting isn't solely to blame. The film is just dull - everything is coated in an overweening blandness. There is hardly any romance and little in the way of comedy to be had. It's a film set during autumn for one thing, which never bodes well for anything other than horror movies. It means there are leaden skies and a sense of unfinished business about everything. The film stock is of variable but generally muddy quality, taking the shine off the production values. Setting the movie in genteel but faceless Primrose Hill doesn't help matters either. Nice though the area is, it's a terribly upper middle-class enclave that is mind-numbingly conservative. So quite where all the random odd characters spring from is unclear. Plus it's hard to care about characters who have everything but still want more. Everyone that appears is another shiny happy person with underlying issues, but they are so "rah" you'll barely care. And frankly their well-prepared one-liners and put-downs are shot with so little finesse that you'll be more annoyed than amused by them.

Piper Perabo seems an odd choice to place Rachel, being and looking very American. She deals with the rigours of an English accent relatively well, though she is occasionally guilty of transatlantic intonation that leaves some sentences sounding a tad strange. However, her performance is let down by her lack of emotional range. She can do doe-eyed innocence very well, but ask more of her and she is flummoxed. She has no chemistry with either of her on-screen paramours and this makes a mockery of the dilemma the character finds herself in.

I'm not sure why Lena Headey has had so many bites of the cherry of her acting career. She's a capable actress (probably more suited to television than film) but lacks that extra ingredient that makes a star. For one thing she can't hold a consistent accent unless it's her own, so she struggles as Luce in that respect. The character seems to be more about scruffy clothes and dodgy tattoos than real personality to Headey and the result is a very bland turn. She evinced nothing in me other than underwhelming indifference.

Matthew Goode comes across as a new version of Hugh Grant - all well-intentioned bumbling and bashful apologies delivered with a posh accent. It's a role he plays well, but there isn't a great deal for him to do and he spends much of the film standing around like a spare part. Though I guess that is the point of the character. His best mate Coop, played by Darren Boyd, feels like he's been drafted in from some misogynistic netherworld. He wears his commitment-phobic credentials on his sleeve but hits the majority of the punch-lines too hard, anticipating the laughs. The result is an unbearably smug performance that makes you want to find Boyd and slap him. Still, at least he's made specific character choices, which is more than can be said for "Buffy's" Anthony Stewart Head. As Rachel's dad, it's hard to decide if he's playing, drunk, absent-minded or just absent. Whatever the combination, it makes for a perplexed and perplexing show of not-quite-thereness. Celia Imrie wades in with acid tongue flailing as Rachel's harpy mother. She's good value as always, but is cut adrift by a script that can't think what to do with her.

The "original" music by Alex Heffes is anything but. It relies on ambient electronica with a few Hammond organ riffs here and there to bring it in line with current tastes. He uses maudlin string arrangements when things are sad, indie guitars that give it a mid-nineties sensibility and a louder one in a belated attempt to add excitement when events are hotting up. The soundtrack is similarly predictable, though there is at least a wedding reception on which one can blame the cheesy strains of "D.I.S.C.O.", "The Look of Love" and Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Right Round". But its use of "Imagine Me and You" is criminal.

"Imagine Me and You" wants to be thought daring merely because it places a same-sex relationship centre stage. But the mediocre script, ordinary direction and distinctly average performances betray it as little more than yet another middle-brow rip-off of Richard Curtis' chocolate box pretty Middle England. The fact that the central relationship is a lesbian one is merely a gimmick that is pretending to be a real innovation. This is a mid-Sunday afternoon Channel 5 affair that I wouldn't spend money on seeing.
 

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