So what could have led Roger Michel, the obviously bright and perceptive director of Enduring Love, to take Ian McEwan’s 1998 novel about a bizarre romantic obsession and turn it into a “jokeless gloomarama?” wonders New Yorker critic Anthony Lane. “The ideas behind Enduring Love may be fascinating, but they don’t play, they sulk, and so it was during another annoying rant from Jed the Pest [i.e., Rhys Ifans’ thoroughly revolting stalker character] that I leaned over to the friend beside me and whispered, ‘All I really, really want at this moment, in the whole world, is to be watching Dodgeball.”
