LEAP YEAR (PG, 100 mins) **
Starring Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott, John Lithgow, Kaitlin Olson, Sarah Hadland, Ben Caplan

%movie(22782)

The luck of the Irish runs out for one hopeless romantic in this sappy road movie that clearly signposts every tiny pothole in the path to true love.

To say the lead characters are an unlikely match would be an understatement. She’s a fiercely independent interior designer from Boston with money to burn, he’s a languid chef from the nether regions of Ireland, about to lose his pub to the debt collectors.

Anna Brady (Adams) is deliriously happy with her cardiologist boyfriend Jeremy (Scott) and she becomes convinced he is about to get down on bended knee. He doesn’t, and heads off to Dublin instead for a conference.

Following the lead of her father (Lithgow), Anna hatches a plan to propose to Jeremy in Ireland on Leap Day.

However, her carefully-plotted itinerary falls into disarray when bad weather forces the airplane to make a detour, far from her intended destination of Dublin.

Thankfully, handsome innkeeper Declan (Goode) promises to help her travel all of the way to Dublin in time for February 29, in exchange for the euros to save his ailing pub.

On the way, Anna and Declan fall victim to outrageous misfortune. Every disaster brings them closer together and as they approach their destination, Anna has a very important decision to make.

Leap Year is a terrible waste of Oscar nominee Adams’s undeniable talents. Her globe-trotting heroine errs on the annoying, and we don’t believe for an instant in the burgeoning attraction to Goode’s wastrel with a wandering accent.