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One Day there was a film review!
A film review of One Day
This week, resident reviewer Andrew Sheldrick has been usurped by Emma Robinson, in part because of his insistence on watching Final Destination 5, but largely due to Emma’s love of David Nicholls’ One Day, and her pathological dislike of Anne Hathaway.
Closely based on the novel, One Day chronicles the friendship of Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) over 20 years.
Faith says:
Emma was the natural choice to compose this review, as it was she who introduced me to the novel, closely followed by some harsh words about the fact that she didn’t feel Hathaway was good enough to play her heroine. I like Hathaway a lot, but I concede Emma’s point – Emma Morley has a feistiness about her that you couldn’t imagine the super-feminine, innocent and beautiful actress delivering.
That said, apart from the sometimes-there-sometimes-not Yorkshire accent, Hathaway does play the part well – sometimes I felt she was too ‘wishy washy’, then remembered that the movie is very true to the book, and that those were the times when Ms Morley frustrated me too.
What I was really impressed with, though, was Jim Sturgess’ ability to play Dexter, a character I loathed throughout the book, turning page after page fervently hoping that the lovely Emma would turn her back on the self-important, self-destructive man. Dexter did become the focus of the movie, where Emma is very much the protagonist in the book, something that will inevitably annoy the long-term fans.
The great thing about this movie – for adapting a book that spans two decades and doing it well is no mean feat – is that Nicholls wrote the screenplay, and it’s as sensitive, as amusing, as touching and as heart-wrenching as the best-selling book was, if some of the intricacies and clever concepts are lost. It’s still well worth going to see – not one day, now.
Emma says:
As Faith said, I adored One Day as a book. It’s a simple concept, cleverly done with an ultimate heroine (Emma Morley) who is smart, funny and very normal. When I heard it was Anne Hathaway playing Emma I was gutted. Hathaway is all-American perfect i.e. everything that Emma Morley isn’t.
In fairness, the flaws in the film weren’t actually all her fault. Yes, she failed with a Yorkshire accent (I don’t blame her for this, she got it right some of the time and surely someone on set could have pointed out that she’d have been ok doing a bog standard ‘British’ accent – no one would REALLY mind), she failed to pull off the witty, sarcastic Emma that I’d fallen in love with (but this was always going to be the case – whoever cast her was clearly an idiot) but my main problem was that the film as a whole just didn’t work.
For me, the book had been driven by Emma but the film seemed to switch that focus to Dexter. The events were about him with Emma relegated to a supporting role. Whilst the concept of ‘one day’ worked perfectly in the book, that same concept seemed lost and unnecessary in the film. I very much doubt that anyone who hadn’t read the book would have noticed or cared whether the dates were there or not.
Overall the film seemed to skip over the surface missing all the little details that make Emma and Dexter’s story so special. Maybe people who haven’t read the book would find this an easy to watch rom-com but for a book that is so poignant and captivating, the film falls flat and is massively disappointing.
Was One Day, in your opinion, true to the novel, or was something just not right? Leave your comments below…
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About the author
Name: Be Fabulous
Website: be-fabulous.co.uk
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