Compared to its subsequent b****rd offspring ("Elephant Juice" and "Born Romantic") this is a faultless masterpiece. Is it really enough to get a few admittedly very good actors together, get them to do a few mildly funny, mildly touching scenes and then edit it all together? Perhaps it would be if this film didn't have ideas above its station. I'm all for having characters who are f*cked-up and mentally disturbed, but how dare the makers of "This Year's Love" introduce just such a character (Liam, played by Ian Hart) and have him involved with all the main female characters in the movie and then just remove him from the story when they can no longer think of what to do with him? This is insulting and offensive. The balanced, "normal" people are all okay, so that's all that matters. Disgraceful. Liam is the only one of the characters who can't cope with all this bed-hopping, being dumped, falling in and out of love and all the rest of it. Yes, all his girlfriends in this film deserve better, but what about him? Who cares? Clearly not the makers of this half-hearted film.
There are pleasures to be had - Dougray Scott is excellent as the serial womaniser and complete git. His scene with Sophie towards the end ("Yes - meeeee!") is great. And Sophie has a superb monologue directed at the hapless Liam ("coming faster than a speeding bullet") which ends with her son waving "Bye Bye" to him. A fine scene. Henshall and McCormack are also good as ever. Though I wish someone would explain to London film-makers that people who work on supermarket tills rarely if ever get taxis from Camden to Heathrow. It would have been much funnier to show her getting on the tube and being endlessly frustrated at delays, crowds, breakdowns, broken escalators. See the end of Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" for details of how this sort of scene can be done. Kathy Burke is, of course, superb. For some inexplicable reason, however, the band she plays in is fronted by the ever-loathsome David Gray. The scene where she takes centre stage is hilarious as Mister Gray fights to hog the limelight, waving his head about and thrashing his acoustic for all it's worth - thankfully the film-makers seem quite aware of how vile he is, and track in to the lovely kathy, forcing him out of the frame. Well done.
There are worse ways to spend two hours of your life (actually going to Camden, for example) but this film could have been so much better. Then again, on the evidence of the follow-up, "Born Romantic", they could also do a whole lot worse.
