Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! The judgments of two seasoned pros are producing another Toronto Film Festival trouble alarm, this one concerning Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year. It’s been described all along as a Ridley Lite flick about a London financial shark (Russell Crowe) growing a soul and falling in love as a result of owning, visiting and working on a vineyard in the south of France.
Lightly spirited and whimsical doesn’t seem to be Crowe’s forte, agreed, but one plugged-in journo says the problem is with the film itself. Another disagrees, saying that A Good Year is “a painfully obvious (and failing) attempt by Crowe to show he’s funny after a year of looking weird and hostile.”
I don’t like hearing this and I’m trying to figure some way to deny it or somehow brush it aside. I like Ridley Lite moves (Matchstick Men, Someone to Watch Over Me) and there’s no question about Scott being an immaculate craftsman so I don’t get it.