Up For Love

As much of a sucker I am for romance flicks, there is only a finite amount of variations you can do with the genre. It is a very structured genre that is really heavily dependent on the conventions that have been laid down in movies that have come before. That doesn't change if your lead actor is incredibly charming. And it certainly doesn't change based on where in the world the movie is made.

Diane (Virgine Efira) returns home after a night out to a phone call telling her that she left her cellphone at the restaurant. She agrees to meet up with the mysterious man who has her phone who's name is Alexandre. When she arrives at the restaurant where they are meeting, she finds out that Alexandre is only four foot nine. Despite an initial shock, Diane agrees to go on a date with Alexandre and soon she finds herself falling in love with him. But Diane is torn by the resistance she sees from the people around her to see Alexandre as a potential partner.

Boy, oh boy, so the premise of this movie is actually quite tolerable, despite being a conventional romantic flick. It goes through all the beats you'd expect in perfect fashion. But that also made it super boring, you knew when the highs were, you knew when the lows were. Let's get to specifics. First off, the CGI effect to make the regularly six foot Dujardin appear shorter looked absolutely ridiculous. You could tell that he was filmed seperately and just inserted in over the top of the shot. A lot of the time he looked like a double amputee from the shoulders and that was even when he was using his own body. There was one joke about his son's large dog always knocking him over that was played out to death and you knew it was coming and unfunny. Also annoying was the fact that no one who knew Diane was accepting of Alexandre and were all quite vicious toward (except her deaf stepfather who offers one of the better heartbreaking moments of the film). I especially hated the assistant to Diane and her lawyer ex-husband. She acted like a bratty child caught between two divorcing parents and was completely unlikeable.

There were a couple of good things happening in this movie. Dujardin is incredibly charismatic and his whole persona works really well within the confines of the character. He also has great chemistry with co-star Virgine Efira, despite the physical problems presented by the CGI. They are both good actors and the moments they have together are quite tender. The only other thing that I really admired was the opening scene where Diane walks around her apartment on the phone to Alexandre and it was a very impressive single take.

Up For Love doesn't do anything new for the romance genre. While it tries to shake things up by making one of the characters short, that doesn't make it anything new or original. A cast of completely unlikeable characters doesn't help make the movie too watchable either.