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DVD REVIEW: The Accidental Husband, (12), new on DVD through Blockbuster.
The obstacles which stand in the way of true love get ever more obscure as film-makers desperately try to bring something new to the world of romcom.
The Accidental Husband is a good example.
You just know that radio love guru Emma (Uma Thurman) and hunky fireman Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are going to be together by the end of the night.
But first they've got to get over the fact that Emma - without ever having met the couple - has just used her talk show to tell Patrick's fiancee to dump him in front of an audience of millions.
It's not the best of starts - and Patrick is determined on revenge.
This he does, as you do, by hacking into a computer and changing the records so that he and Emma (strange kind of revenge) show up as married to each other when Emma starts to make arrangements for her own forthcoming wedding.
It's kind of tit for tat with the added spice for Emma that not only has she never met her apparent husband, he actually hates her.
Yes, this film really is that contrived. But after that, it slips safely back into all the right channels of romcom predictability.
For all sorts of reasons Emma and Patrick hook up together, are forced to play the part of a happy couple, hiss and spit and start actually to like each other.
Meanwhile in the background lurks Colin Firth as Emma's real fiance. As ever he's playing the stuffy, dull but profoundly decent Brit - and he pretty much sleep-walks through the film on auto-pilot.
The one stab at giving a bit of depth to his character is a strange little weakness he has for stuffing his face with chocolate - a nuance not quite enough to bring him to sparkling life.
But there's nothing too wrong with this film. Occasionally it's quite witty; always it's pretty good to look at; and there are plenty of worse ways to spend your time.
Phil Hewitt
DVD rental supplied by Blockbuster. For details of other new DVD releases see www.blockbuster.co.uk.
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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