'Say When'. Say What?

On the evening I saw ‘Say When’, I got into an argument with my date. Yes, ‘Interstellar’ looked great- look at those effects, look at that cinematography! No, I was not averse to seeing it at some point but it had been a long and trying week and I was in no mood for two and a half hours of beautiful, plodding spectacle. I wanted to be able to be able to switch my mind off and indulge in nonsense. ‘Say When’ looked like it would fit the bill, a light comedy with Keira Knightly having some sort of quarter-life crisis and completely justifiably jumping Sam Rockwell’s bones. It looked like offbeat fun, but with a bit of an indie brain. Sam Rockwell was in ‘Moon’, I pointed out as the date flopped into the seat next to me. Now tell me you never get your own way.

‘Interstellar’ does look pretty good, though.

Knightly plays Meg, an overeducated but directionless late twenty-something struggling to make those big life decisions whilst everyone around her continues to tick off the life boxes: love, wealth, career. In opening scenes we watch her working a menial job for her overindulgent father, fail to connect with her more settled childhood friends, and duck a meeting with a careers advisor by skulking around and watching TV instead. As a late twenty-something armed with childish avoidance tactics, self-deprecation and a great education I’m not entirely sure what to do with, I found these opening scenes funny and relatable. Meg’s just like me!

Unfortunately, about twenty minutes in, Meg meets a bunch of teenagers, gets drunk with them and starts tediously throwing toilet paper around. Ah. I wouldn’t do that, you see. The date, slumped next to me, began to yawn. After a proposal from her soppy boyfriend, one of Meg’s new friends (a believable Chloe Grace Moretz) allows her to hide out at her house for a week. Sam Rockwell is the patriarch of the house. Sparks begin to fly. And I knew it as the end of the road for this film and I.

Ask anyone who knows me – If a film has enough magic, I will swallow any old implausible plot bullshit, because I believe in the magic of cinema like an old fool and constantly fantasise that the next film I watch will have the same effect on me as ‘Back to the Future’ did when I was ten, transcending Cineworld and whisking me away to another world entirely. On every trip to the cinema the same dialogue runs through my mind: Dear Next Film I See, it does not matter one iota that you have scored 58% and distinctly mediocre reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, push my buttons enough and you never know, you could be the next ONE.

However. Asking me to believe that a character such as Sam Rockwell’s Craig, a strict and loving father, a LAWYER, would let a stranger stay in his house for an entire week, for no discernible reason other than she bears an uncanny resemblance to that pretty actress from ‘Atonement’, is witless. This main plotline is played completely straight instead of treated with the kind of surreal, quirky humour such implausibility requires, and this renders the atmosphere flat and hollow. By the end of this sorry mess Meg does not need to worry about getting a job anymore (who needs that stress anyway, eh ladies?) and has taken up with Rockwell instead, presumably to take on the dream life role of ‘stepmother to someone ten years younger than her.’

It’s not just this elephantine plot hole that I object to. Relationships between the characters are pushed to the side just as they begin to take shape, the nuances of Meg’s interactions with her father and friends dropped in favour of hurrying the film to its final conclusion – all Meg really needed was the right man, all along, problems solved. The direction is lifeless and uninspired, one brief static shot follows another then another, all bringing nothing slightly original to the table. The dialogue is also mercilessly clunky. Meg has an epiphany towards the film’s conclusion and delivers a speech comparing herself to a snake that needs to shed its skin. It is so embarrassing the armrests still had imprints of my fingernails in them when the end credits began to roll.

I am by nature a fairly cynical and grumpy person but I have never walked through cinema doors armed with anything other than a kind of determined, joyous anticipation, not just because I am paying to see the bloody thing but because film genuinely excites me. I wanted this film to be cheeky and charming, I wanted to chuckle gently and above all, I wanted to be right, dammit. The date jumped up as soon as the credits began to roll and nudged my knee, and even in the darkness I could see that he was somehow pulling off an expression of annoyed triumph. Off we trudged, so that I may admit that I, on this one occasion, had misfired.