Review for Le Weekend

Nick and Meg are celebrating their anniversary with a trip to Paris. The plan is to spend a weekend and possibly rekindle the flames between them. Instead they spend the next two days, arguing, flirting, arguing, moaning, arguing and then finally bumping into Nick's old friend Morgan who hosts a dinner where all the cats are let out of the bag on Nick and Meg's idyllic life.

This film is horrendous. I have never wanted a film to end so much in my life. This is the kind of film you show to people if you want them to experience what a horrible marriage or what complete boredom is. What is so sad about all this is that it had so much going for it. It has the always wonderful Jim Broadbent, the quirky Jeff Goldblum and it is directed by Notting Hill's Roger Michell. It should be a dead cert... or at least be reasonably entertaining.

It is not.

The two characters are utterly pointless with Broadbent's Nick more or less being a sad put upon old man (basically his character from Bridget Jones) and Lindsay Duncan (who comes across as a poor man's Helen Mirren) as Meg is just a hateful, spiteful woman who doesn't deserve to have the love that Nick wastes on her. The 90 minutes of film can be summed up thus: I love you I hate you I love you I hate you I love you... repeat for 90 minutes and then end.

That's it.

At times the film felt so awkward that it actually felt like it should really be a documentary. The constant bickering (though I'm sure is totally realistic) is never entertaining. Within the film the couple split up so many times that I am unsure what is supposed to be happening. In the beginning Meg books the two of them into a grand hotel 'where Tony Blair stayed' and later when they are talking about how little money they have I think 'Well why did you do that? You morons!' At the end when they are shown the bill there is an almost whimiscal nature to whether they could afford the amount which was probably (based on the hotel) equivilant to both their annual salaries?

As for the ending? I don't wish to spoil it, but when the screen went to black I scratched my head for a good ten minutes wondering what I had just experienced... and what was the point in it all?

The Blu-ray is jampacked with extras. Usually that sentence is a good thing. Not with this film. Commentary by Michell and Producer Kevin Loader is probably a little bit more entertaining than the film itself, though that's not hard. Interviews with Broadbent and Duncan and a separate one with Michell and Writer Hanif Kureishi are fine, though at times with them talking so lovingly I do wonder whether I am missing the great film they are all talking about.

A section with Illustrations by Jane Webster are nice... though I have no idea who she is and maybe they should have pointed out who she is to make it seem worthwhile? A Behind the Scenes thing is basically just a camera filming the shots being set up or filmed and completely pointless. Though the box states there is a trailer, there isn't and this is a shame as I did want to see how they actually promoted this film. I can understand why though as I actually found the trailer on IMDB and am even more outraged. Based on the trailer it is an almost screwball, laugh a minute romantic comedy instead of the miserable, miserable, miserable film that it is.

Of course the one other extra given that I was utterly gobsmacked by was 'Le Weekend: Black and White'. This is, as you can guess, the film in black and white. No changes (as far as I can see), no difference, other than a cheap, very cheap way to make the film even more arthouse than it already is. What's worse is it's not even like it makes a difference you could simply just adjust the colours on the TV and get the same effect??

Le Weekend is the worst film I have seen in a long time. This is the kind of film that makes me want to go watch a Michael Bay film to get its vile taste out of my mouth. Sure Bay's films are one dimensional and pointless, but at least he knows how to make them entertaining to some degree. This is just a waste of some great actors in a thoroughly miserable and more importantly boring film.