Wimbledon

Very disappointing. I can usually find something in a romantic comedy to like. I love Wimbledon (the tournament), I like Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst, but I could find nothing about this movie to like. The action isn't that real, it is neither funny nor romantic. The film really has no feeling whatsoever. I didn't root for them when they were playing in a match, I didn't root for the romance, I just kept waiting for the movie to begin. I felt like I was watching a 90 minute trailer. In fact, I like the trailer better than the movie. It just never got going. Very poor job of bringing the characters to life. I didn't expect much when I rented it, but wow, I don't think that I have seen another movie this void. It would be better watched muted because if you like England there is some nice scenery.

It wouldn't have bothered me that this movie sucked - under any normal circumstances I wouldn't even have bothered panning it - but what really raised my ire was that this film was advertised as 'from the makers of Bridget Jones Diary, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral', which is kind of true; the production company was the same. BUT, and it's a big 'but' folks, this film, unlike the aforementioned three, was NOT written by the altogether talented Richard Curtis (y'know, the kiwi that has written just about everything funny to come out of england in the last 20 years). I go to great pains to point this out for the unsuspecting viewer who might think by renting Wimbledon they are about about to have unleashed upon them something as charming as 'Love Actually' or something as achingly funny as 'Four Weddings', when in fact all they'll get is all the charm and wit of a Zimbabwean politician. That Richard (Richard III) Loncraine directed this slap-in-the-face-with-a-wet-fish piece of drivel bears mentioning only as a contrast to what the difference between a good script and a bad one can mean to a director. Yoda says, 'Like the plague you should avoid this' Ugh.

When you watch so-called date movies, its often more fun to pay attention to how the writer solves the challenge of the genre. After all, movie love is pretty thin stuff when you boil it down. So about a decade ago, date movie scripts started borrowing from other genres. In particular the writers borrowed the trick of focusing on the audience instead of the couple in question. The reason is that you can only go so far in making the couple appealing and attractive. So if you want to make the audience closer to caring, well you just relocate the audience. Therefore, we have a slew of date movies set in public arenas so that the audience can have a clear surrogate on screen. Usually this is done by setting the movie in movieland. This way we can have a movie audience watching a movie/TeeVee audience watching the couple. When they cheer, we cheer. Perhaps the most closely engineered of these was "Notting Hill." In that case a popular actress plays a popular actress. She has a constant on-screen audience not unlike the audience in the theater who were drawn to the film because of Ms Roberts. These projects must have a climax where the love (after some screwup) is proclaimed to the on screen audience. They clap and cheer. We clap and cheer. We've had these with Meg, Julia, Sandra, Catherine and so on, each in turn. Okay. Here we have the latest refinement. They are not about to play with the general shape: two people fall in love in instant movie fashion; they are pulled apart by some events; he announces his love in a very public manner to an on-screen audience thereby making it "real." The boundary between movie love and real love is crossed and we leave the theater feeling happy. The innovation here is the crossing with a sports film using an internal narrative. You can just hear the machinery dropping into place as the screenwriter thought of the formula. Or perhaps he just went to one of the several consultants (like myself) who come up with these schemes. The internal narrative is clever indeed. Usually in a sports movie we (and our screen surrogates) watch the performer, only inferring what is going on in his (usually his) mind. The less we know explicitly the better because our imagination is usually stronger than what they can display. Think of "Bull Durham." But here, we are sometimes in the male's mind (literally hearing his thoughts), sometimes in the normal audience's and sometimes in the on-screen audience's (including the hackneyed announcers-in-the-booth). Shifting back and forth (mirrored by the back and forth of the ball) and adding the idea that he himself is a watcher and wonderer is pretty clever. But the whole thing falls apart at the production level. There's some stuff about a dysfunctional family (or two) that falls flat. Dunst is no longer pert and charming. The direction is clumsy. Too bad. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This is one of the worst romantic comedies I've ever seen. Strictly for chicks and at that, only chicks with bad taste. It's predictable to the extent of torture. I really pity all the boyfriends who were dragged along to watch this corn-fest and thought it might not be so bad. John McEnroe makes a cameo and I wonder if he wrote and directed it too. The only thing this film served up was bad taste. No doubt it was a big hit with the Titanic-loving brigade. The writing was bad bad and the service from the actors was enough to make you cover your eyes and ears. The film seemed to out do itself in every following scene with how corny it could get. This film makes Jackass look like Shakespeare, How this has gotten the score that it has on IMDb I'll never know, I guess it must be English people loving all the flag waving during the matches(guys ye have got to stop giving your home grown stuff 10 out of 10 as it then becomes impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff)...but I can't be sure. Pity the rain didn't stop play on this one, game set and match to bad film making.

Wimbledon, in short, is poorly written. There is very little character development and consequently it is difficult to muster any great interest in or sympathy for the protagonists of the piece. The film combines a weak tale of an underdog winning through the tournament and an overly sentimental romance. The film may appeal to hopeless romantics but this is not a work of any depth or substance. The actors do what they can with the screenplay but in truth it smacks of children's TV with a soundtrack. It does contain a brilliant gem in the injured ballboy. I challenge anyone not laugh at this hapless episode in which a tiny kid is poleaxed by the fastest serve ever and yet is still in attendance as lucky mascot in the next match - black eye and all. This is not so much a straight to DVD film as straight in the bin. If you care for such fluff then you're better off watching Henman's annual failure - at least that is free.

Wimbledon tells the lame tale of a regular tennis player who suddenly becomes king of the bling, and wins the tennis tournament. For starters, if your 118th in the world, you ain't gonna win the biggest hot-shot tournament in a week. But Hollywood has to make a sappy movie, and in order for that he HAS to win. Next most predictable thing: the romance. It follows the basic, lame, step-by-step romantic stuff. 1. Boy Accidentally Meets Girl 2. They Bond, do something together. 3. For some reason, they are not meant to be together, but they stay together. 4. Boy or Girl does something not good that ruins it all 5. They apologize in some obscure way. 6. A Happy, sappy ending. So Wimbledon is a horrible film, and should not have earned a dollar in profits.

This movie was advertised as being from the director of Notting Hill, itself a mediocre and formulaic film heavy on stereotype and light on plot twists. So I knew it was going to suck. I watched it to humor my sister on her birthday. If I'd known exactly how bad it was going to be, I would've pushed harder for a different chick flick. The movie was noteworthy mainly for its liberal use of cliché. The sappy thumbs ups to the ball boys and other assorted "little people," the black-and-white contrast between Peter and his eventual American opponent, and the jealous and overprotective father coming around late in the game to root for the daughter's beau are merely the first three that come to mind. Then there's the utter lack of character development. I'm still not sure whether the characters were played by real actors or by construction-paper cutouts. As a tennis player who almost broke into the USTA top 100 in the state of Georgia, but aged out of my division, I might have at least enjoyed the tennis scenes and the player's comeback attempt. But it was not to be. The tennis was thoroughly uninspiring. Peter's character didn't even appear to have rehearsed his perfunctory lunges for the ball, not to mention his drop shot.

This movie is exactly what I expected. Not worth the money I paid to see it in theaters, however it was not my turn to choose the flick, so I reluctantly went. This movie is not about Tennis, so very little point in commenting on the fact we don't see actors actually playing tennis. They weren't good enough for real action, I understand that. The story was stupidly predictable, this is also expected I have come to understand when it comes to seeing romantic comedies. I can't comment on Kirsten Dunst's acting ability, because it gets me angry that people still give her starring roles even though she hasn't done a decent job of sincerely portraying a character since she was in "An Interview with a Vampire". Paul Bettany was memorable but there was a definite lack of chemistry, and also a lack of good material to work with. The story itself was lacking in substance, but also just straight laughs... I hate when people say its a perfect date movie....as if people on a date don't want something entertaining...so I think I would say this....this is a good movie to rent when it comes out on DVD and you plan to make out on the couch while you are supposedly watching it.

I wasn't expecting Schindler's List when I sat down to watch Wimbledon, but this movie scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it comes to supposed lighthearted romantic fare. Professional tennis players Peter and Lizzie simply meet, have sex and fall in love before we've seen them have a meaningful conversation. Throughout the movie, we never learn exactly what these two see in each other. We're supposed to blindly believe that they met and fell madly in love for no reason, with Lizzie suddenly becoming a muse for an over-the-hill tennis player. There is absolutely no suspense in any of the tennis matches, and every turn is completely obvious. With such a weak script and such a phoned in performance by Kirsten Dunst, this played like a bad TV movie of the week.

...comes another romantic comedy, almost exactly like it! Having picked up on the blatant similarities between Paul Bettany and Hugh Grant as foppish, witty Englishmen in Wimbledon, it came as no surprise to me to learn that Hugh Grant had originally been considered for the lead role of Peter Colt. If you have ever seen a film starring Hugh Grant as the lead, you know now what Wimbledon is essentially like and how it is acted because Paul Bettany's tennis-playing character Peter is exactly like a Hugh Grant character--confused, witty and extremely English. While Bettany does not quite have the the charming part down to perfection yet, he is much more attractive than the king of romantic comedies. He is also strangely compatible with Kirsten Dunst and that makes it a nice romance story. While centering the plot around tennis (Wimbledon, in fact) is fairly uncommon, this is only a disguise for a genuinely ordinary and well-milked premise. Man is out of touch and out of luck and meets a wild, free girl who will help him awake from his sedated mental state and make him feel alive again. Conflicts inevitably rise, because the man and girl are two players in Wimbledon and so there is more at stake than just a love affair; they are both competing to win. In the end, this film is really quite cute and often at least a little funny but believe me when I say it's nothing you haven't seen before. I mostly enjoyed it because of Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau, to be honest.