Film Review: Crush (2001)
When Tony Blair took power, the depressive rainy island suddenly became "Cool Britannia", at least if the British film makers were concerned. And, as such, it became some perfect idyllic setting for romantic comedies like Crush, a 2001 film written and directed by John McKay. Its protagonist, played by Andie MacDowell, is Kate Schlegel, headmistress of a prestigious private school. She spends all her free time hanging out with two friends who, like her, are very successful at their respective professions – Janine (played by Imelda Staunton) is a police detective, while Molly Cartwright (played by Anna Chancellor) is a physician. However, all three women share the same problem – despite their professional success they simply can't find a proper man and instead they commiserate over each other's plight by drinking gin, smoking cigarettes and eating chocolate. Things, however, change when Kate meets Jed Willis (played by Kenny Doughty), a young and dashing church organist who is fifteen years her junior and used to be her pupil. The two of them start a torrid sex affair that soon evolves into something more committed, much to the displeasure of Janine and Molly who find the liaison inappropriate and conspire to end it.
Crush starts decently, as a minor league effort to mimic Four Weddings and a Funeral, a British romantic comedy that tried to wrap genre clichés with middle class milieu, bits of progressive values and occasional slip into naughty vocabulary. References to the said film are underlined with the presence of Andie MacDowell and Anna Chancellor who had appeared in the 1994 hit. Scottish director John McKay, however, lacks the scriptwriting talent of Richard Curtis and the directing talent of Mike Newell. To make things even worse, in a misguided attempt to make Crush look different, McKay somewhere around half of the running time adds a plot twist that completely transforms the film from a romantic comedy into something much more serious and darker. This is a blow the film never recovers from and any of McKay's attempts to compensate for this drastic shift with lame attempts at humour are doomed from the start. Characters the audience is supposed to sympathise with become utterly unlikeable, and the same goes for the film itself, making almost two hours of running time unbearable for the audience.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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