Some random thoughts after One Day (the film, not the book)
1. As I supposed, Anne Hathaway is uncapable of faking a decent British accent for long. When she speaks fast, her American accent comes out. Em was from the Yorkshire: it was too much asking for a Northern actress, but was it too difficult to find a decent British actress to play this role? As there are not good actresses in the UK. I mean, they picked Romola Garai for a minor role, ROMOLA GARAI, not the first girl on the street, and they couldn’t find someone suitable to play Emma?
2. However, she was kinda good for the role. I mean, no heartbreaking, but quite good.
3. Jim Sturgess is always so cute. Even with grey hair. Though, there was something missing in his Dexter. I don’t know, but they didn’t develop the character as well as I had figured they would have done. But it’s not because of his acting, I think…
4. …it was because of the script. First thing, I didn’t like the fact they started with the day of Em’s death. The good, and the bad thing of the book was that when you arrive at that day, you don’t expect to happen a thing like that. It seems they finally are together and happy, and a sudden death is not on the cards. I also didn’t like how fast we switch from a year to the following one. I know it had been impossibile to spend equal time on each year, or the film would have last AGES, but some crucial moments of the story (Tilly’s wedding and Paris) were lacking of something. Why showing Em swimming in the pool for a minute, around half film? Pointless. Maybe they should have skipped more at the beginning and not creating this pointless gaps in the final segments (why put Ian and Dex talking and Dex and Jas in Edinburgh in 2009 and in 2011, respectively, when they could have been Second and Third Anniversary?). Don’t know. And last, as I told about Dexter, but this applies also to Emma, I can’t feel for them the same affection I felt reading about them. They both miss of depth.
5. I cried a bit. I’m not lying about that. I cried for the same thing I cried while reading the book. And watching it in motion pictures was as sad and hard as reading it.
6. I suppose that who didn’t read the book and doesn’t intend to do it, they will find the film good and maybe they would love it. I can’t. I can’t. I am some kind of disappointed. I saw other films taken or inspired by books I actually loved, and some of them were as good (I think of Atonement, for instance, and Never let me go). My disappoint is high because Nicholls himself wrote the script. David, I thought you loved your children more than this…
