A look at the trials and tribulations of a pair of newlyweds during their first year as a married couple.
This is neither edgy nor funny enough.
Abysmal, humourless newlyweds comedy.
Predictability could be tolerated if these characters were in any way interesting, and despite throwing considerable talent at the screen (Olivia Colman and Stephen Merchant turn up in obnoxious cameos and do their worst work ever) I Give It a Year just isn't funny or romantic. So, in that sense, it is an anti-rom-com.
The jokes are strong and delivered by a very talented cast, but the heart isn’t there. It’s easy to laugh, but hard to care.
I give it two stars.
In the end it amounts to not much, but in the moment I laughed a lot.
The danger with the storyline is that you won’t really care who ends up with whom but, in the nick of time, the picture engages emotionally, putting aside the flippancy for some well delivered, from-the-heart exchanges.
Dan Mazer's film about a couple who got married too quickly is both funny and plausible, if slightly constricted by its romcom template.
This remains a hit and miss affair. Writer-director Mazer – who co-scripted Borat and Brüno – shows an obvious flair for comedy but struggles to move beyond genre clichés when it comes to the romance part of the equation.
Charmless...saddled with a faux-edgy script.
Ultimately, the mood is so depressingly sour that you might want to follow up with a film directed by Todd Solondz or Lars von Trier, just to make yourself feel better about the human race.
Made by people desperately bent on putting the "lewd" into "ludic" and featuring a collection of characters you might meet in some special British annexe of hell, I Give It a Year deserves a much harsher sentence than the title suggests and without remission for good conduct.
I Give it a Year: how I tried to subvert the romcom
General release. Check local listings for show times.