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A mess of a not-a-romantic-comedy. |
| There’s a basic premise in This Time Next Year that is so simple but also creative and original. One moment of the year which most people think about exactly once a year and then never again, unless the odds have deemed you to be that one person it affects. Every year on New Year’s Eve there is a race in maternity wards to have the first baby born in the new year as it often comes with cash awards and prizes. | 2024 Directed by: Nick Moore Screenplay by: Sophie Cousens Starring: Sophie Cookson, Lucien Laviscount | |
| What happens to the second baby born in the new year? Nothing. Unless you’re Minnie Cooper (Sophie Cookson), a young woman convinced that she was born unlucky. Disaster strikes every New Year’s Eve and she would prefer to just stay in bed and skip December 31st and January 1st every year. Her friends all think she’s crazy, so she’s decided maybe this year will be different. She ventures out of her apartment to meet her boyfriend at a party. It’s not different enough. She finds herself locked in a bathroom for the entire night, she misses midnight, everyone leaves without her, until Quinn (Lucien Laviscount) finds her in the morning. Quinn’s first name is all it takes Minnie to remember who he is. She doesn’t know him, but he was the baby born one minute before her. The baby who took her name, took all of her luck, and got rewarded a nice sum of money simply for being born first. Money her family could have used. Quinn is a rich, successful venture capitalist. Minnie is a struggling small bakery owner who’s about to have to put her business out of its misery. She is bitter alright. This is a fantastic premise. The set-up for the characters is perfect, and then they took that nowhere, or at least nowhere good. There are very few romantic comedies that can pull off a mental illness plot: including, the Australian Addition, the Spanish Crazy About Her and the American The Right One. This Time Next Year is not one of them. Partly because the mental illness storyline is completely separate from the romantic comedy plot, and partly because the storyline is poorly written and not handled well. After the fun premise, the movie becomes a drama. Why? Who knows. It’s a perfect recipe for a romantic comedy, instead it’s a very staid drama with a little bit of romance and even less comedy to be found. Themes include that money doesn’t always buy happiness and maybe things aren’t as perfect as they seem (It’s Quinn’s mother who has the undefined, vague mental illness). The movie spends the better part of two hours playing with those two cliché themes while Minnie and Quinn get to know each other and slowly fall in love. The relationship part is good, or it would be good, if the rest of the movie around it is even slightly decent. Ultimately This Time Next Year is a mess. The great premise devolves into a boring drama with way too many half-thought-out plot lines. These characters deserve to be in a romantic comedy, they are built for a romantic comedy, but just because you start with a comedy of errors and end with a romantic gesture, does not mean it’s a romantic comedy. The 100+ minutes in between tell us otherwise. | ||