Last Chance Harvey

Copyright 2008, Overture Films

Without being too forthcoming, I had to exit the theater where I was watching Last Chance Harvey without about ten minutes left in the film. I walked out as the final scene began and returned seconds before it ended, and though I would have much preferred to have not exited at all, I didn't miss a damn thing.

Last Chance Harvey, a movie that unquestionably has the worst title of any movie of the past 12 months, isn't a bad film by any measure. Writer-director Joel Hopkins certainly knows how to aim his camera, and the script has relatively more life in it than most. Even more, he's aided by the charm and talent exuded by stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. However, the movie's main hook comes too late and is dimmed too frequently.

The concept is simple: watch two charismatic actors with a quirky chemistry re-enact a happier version of Before Sunrise. So why waste 30 minutes of the movie keeping Hoffman's Harvey Shine and Thompson's Kate Walker apart? And then, when you bring them together, why cover up their dialogue with musical montages? What is most maddening is that Hopkins is right to cast Hoffman and Thompson together, as their chemistry is so perfect that there are multiple scenes, but not enough of them, when it genuinely feels as though the two actors aren't acting, aren't playing their roles: they're just Dustin and Emma, walking through London, just talking. When the plot intrudes in various ways, we're jerked out of reality, painfully so.

The problem is the plot, which is always at odds with the concept. Harvey is a commercial jingle writer, unhappy at his job, but not unhappy enough that he's thrilled when he's fired over the phone at Heathrow Airport. On that same day, he saw his daughter get married, but she was given away by her stepfather. Even more, his entire family seems to shun him, seems to treat him like he's from another planet. So when he meets Kate, a lonely woman whose only friend is her mother (Eileen Atkins), at the airport bar, he strikes up a conversation with her, which leads to more and more.

The script, despite its strength, is too contrived; it works too hard to get these two together at all, when it'd be much easier to just start the damn movie in the airport bar, partly so we get more of Hoffman and Thompson, who seem just as much at odds with the plot as the audience is. For Harvey, the first act only makes us feel excessive amounts of sympathy for him; he loses his job and, honestly, his family, especially his daughter, treats him in such a cruel way, that I wanted him to have another family.

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson talking to each other for 90 minutes is a great idea for a movie or even a play. Hopefully, if the duo ever meet up again in such a forum, we'll get 90 minutes, not 30 with a hokey plot hovering around them.

Two stars out of four