Elsa & Fred

After a very delayed release, Michael Radford's romantic comedy Elsa & Fred has made it here to Australia. The film stars two giants of cinema, Shirley Maclaine and Christopher Plummer in the titular roles. But with a cheesy love-story about an elderly couple, this may be a case of wasted talent.

Set in New Orleans (although you'd never know it), Elsa & Fred follows Elsa (Shirley Maclaine) and Fred (Christopher Plummer), two elderly residents in an apartment building that are opposites in every possible way. Fred is a recent widow and has been forced to move by his daughter, Lydia (Marcia Gay Harden), he's bitter and takes a morbid view on life. Elsa, who's next door, often seems to live in her own dreamy romantic state. She consistently lies to paint a better picture of herself, and dreams of Rome, taking the persona of Anita Ekberg in the film La Dolce Vita. After what seems like an incredibly short period of time, these two opposites attract (*spoiler alert* if you haven't seen the poster.)

This is one of the corniest movies I've ever had to sit through. It tells a story that's been told a thousand times before, the elderly couple hitting it off, opposites attracting etc, and it's been told better before. Clearly I'm not the intended audience, but similar films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series manage to pitch down to a broader audience. The film is a remake of a Spanish-Argentine film of the same name, perhaps it's better, I don't know. They try to draw attention away from the clichés by subverting the stereotypes to make it more interesting. Look at Elsa, she's an eccentric elderly woman who listens to rap music, how original! Give me a break, you can feel the manipulation. The climax of Elsa & Fred I actually quite liked, but it's still extremely corny. The romantic story is a sweet premise but the delivery is appalling. At one point in the film, Elsa's artistic son unveils a painting that he calls "explosion of pain". Watching the film is not far off.

There are a lot of well-established actors attached to this feature. Not the least of whom, Shirley Maclaine and Christopher Plummer. I must say, they do extraordinarily well for the content they're provided with. But this pales in comparison to many of the memorable films they've starred in over the years. Marcia Gay Harden is one of those incredible talents who sadly gets underused in a lot of films, and once again she is here. Chris Noth, Scott Bakula and James Brolin are all similarly talented but they bring about as much to the story as their equivalent cardboard cut-outs would. All of the great talent here push it as far as the material will allow, unfortunately it's just not very much.

The message of Elsa and Fred is that 'It's never too late'. Unfortunately, if you've entered the cinema for this one, it already is.