by Cecilia Ahern
So within the span of the last week I watched the movie and flew through the book. I've been trying to find a fairly recent lighthearted romantic comedy, and it seems they're going through a bit of a drought (note to Mindy Kaling, pretty please use your rom-com knowledge to write an awesome romantic comedy for today's generation!). There are dramas and lots of action movies, but nothing super lighthearted and fun. I don't know knowing the ending or a few cliches, but I like the slice-of-life feeling and the totally unexpected situations that these people meet. Nothing's better than a meet-cute and hoping it happens in real life!
Anyhow, side rant over, I stumbled across a movie called Love, Rosie. I loved Lily Collins in Stuck in Love, and I was pleasantly surprised by Sam Claflin's performance in Catching Fire, so I thought, "Why not?" Basically, Rosie (Collins) and Alex (Claflin) have been the absolute bestest of friends since pre-school, and the story follows them through their lives as they almost, but not quite pass the line from friendship to love. The movie starts on Rosie's 18th birthday party with a few flashbacks to explain their friendship, and ends when they are around 30. The book, told in IMs, e-mails, letters, is told from the beginning until they are 50. Think of these as slightly happier versions of One Day, an ending I don't think I'll ever quite get over.
I do have to say I liked the movie slightly better than the book only because of the shortened time frame. I flew through the book, and while, yes, it is incredibly realistic, I just felt bad for the characters by the time the end came. In the movie, we leave Rosie at 30, having a feeling her life is going to workout just fine. Maybe it's because I'm still in my early twenties that I can jive with thirty, but the fact that things don't start looking up for her until she's almost fifty in the book, is sort of a downer. Not to mention the fact that life really does get in her way constantly. She has moments in her teens, twenties, thirties, and forties where she's about to make a huge change, and life just shoves her back on her butt. I guess, that's meant to make us feel better that she sort of gets a solid ending, but the whole book I was just waiting for happy moments. She gets a lot of satisfactory moments, but nothing where you're thinking, "Finally!" Even the ending, which we all know as we read the book, sort of happens in a whimper.
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