- Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n
![\"Rethink](\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\")
<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong><\/p>\nJonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em><\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
One Day<\/strong><\/p>\n
As sensitive and open-minded as I like to think I am towards all genres of film, I find myself behaving like most guys when it comes to the dreaded chick flick, especially if it\u2019s based on a best-selling novel or has a nebulous, nondescript name that could mean anything or nothing. So you can imagine why I\u2019d be wary of \u2018One Day\u2019, a film based on an international bestseller that stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as Emma and Dexter, a British would-be couple whose friendship and romantic near-misses are followed by checking in with them every June 15th over twenty years. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve seen any of the promotional material for \u2018One Day\u2019 or know the conventions of romance movies, you know that Emma and Dexter\u2019s evolving affections for each other won\u2019t go unrequited. And the fun of a movie like \u2018One Day\u2019 should be seeing how a couple destined to be together eventually, over two decades, grows together, overcomes their self-imposed obstacles and figures out what the audience has known all along. <\/p>\n
But in \u2018One Day\u2019, it\u2019s made clear that Emma knows early on that she wants to be with Dexter. That means that the biggest obstacle to Emma and Dexter becoming the couple we know they should be is Dexter, and, more specifically, his immaturity. That\u2019s when I realized that \u2018One Day\u2019 isn\u2019t so much a romance movie as it is an emotional revenge fantasy for women who\u2019ve had the misfortune of falling for jerks. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all had that fantasy, where that dreamboat crush who wouldn\u2019t reciprocate your affections during your awkward youth comes crawling back later in life, broken and humbled, to tell you what a fool they were to deny you, only to find that you\u2019ve transformed into a sexy, successful swan with a smoking hot partner. It\u2019s the dream high school reunions are made of. <\/p>\n
And that\u2019s essentially what we have with \u2018One Day\u2019 since, for much of the film, Dexter (and it\u2019s really his movie) is a good-looking, charming, privileged, womanizing, fairly shallow jerk, especially when his career and ego take off when he inexplicably and unrealistically becomes a B-list celebrity as the loudmouth host of an annoying late-night show. It seems Dexter\u2019s only redeeming quality is his friendship with Emma, who has become more frumpy as her dreams of becoming a writer and having a relationship with Dexter stall and she finds herself stuck in a dead-end waitressing job.<\/p>\n
But in keeping with the crush revenge fantasy, we know that Dexter must eventually be laid low, admit the error of his ways and beg forgiveness, while Emma must blossom professionally and aesthetically and get a hot boyfriend to really rub it in. There\u2019s more to the story that I won\u2019t give away, but I\u2019ll just say that \u2018One Day\u2019 takes this fantasy to its logical and supposedly tearjerking conclusion.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m sure we\u2019d all like to turn the tables on those that spurned us, the problem with this as a movie is that we spend much of \u2018One Day\u2019 waiting for Dexter to stop being a jerk while wondering why the increasingly attractive and accomplished Emma hasn\u2019t met someone better. Dexter\u2019s friendship with Emma is supposedly his saving grace, yet we rarely see the connection of like minds that should be its foundation. And while the film looks nice, its tone is uneven and never quite feels like slices of life taken at yearly intervals.<\/p>\n
If you want to see a great movie about two people whose friendship slowly, sometimes painfully turns romantic, 1989\u2019s \u2018When Harry Met Sally\u2019 still can\u2019t be beat. But if you want payback on a former crush who clearly doesn\u2019t know what they\u2019re missing, \u2018One Day\u2019 might help you vicariously stick it to them.<\/p>\n
\u2018One Day\u2019 is rated PG-13 and opens today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}