After spending the night together on the night of their college graduation Dexter and Em are shown each year on the same date to see where they are in their lives. They are sometimes together, sometimes not, on that day.
Much of Nicholls’ sharp dialogue and emotional truth remains intact, but the over-faithful translation does little to compensate for what can’t be lifted from the page.
Those not entranced by the book may buy it, but hardcore fans will be disappointed.
On the film trundles, feeling less like One Day and more like The Longest Day, leaving no soapy cliché untouched.
The fun and popular David Nicholls novel has become a so-so rom-com, though Anne Hathaway's accent isn't quite the disaster many forecast.
As it is, one of the most perceptive books of our age has been turned into just another romcom, and not even a very good one.
The film’s main failing has to do with its handling of time, not ecky thump accents. The device that made the book work so well, setting the tale over decades, drains the story of life when the same technique is deployed in the film.
Everyone involved singularly fail to raise a titter but, not content with being unfunny, unromantic and vacuous, it gets even worse by going all Nicholas Sparks on us and, during a horribly protracted final stretch, it becomes a watch-checker of the worst order.
It may not truly capture the complexities of its source material but One Day is funny, winning and entertaining - if little else.
What’s left is a pleasant, occasionally amusing, tragically tasteful romantic drama. That’s not an insignificant achievement, but it does create an odd situation in which One Day, the book, is more cinematic than One Day, the movie.
It's hard to shake off an overridig sense of pointlessness.
One Day, the screen adaptation of the hugely popular novel by David Nicholls, is a romcom that goes beyond genre conventions but still delivers.
The one problem with the film - and it's a big one - is that you never get the sense that Emma and Dexter were made for one another.
Real love ain't so rosy.
By the very end, then, One Day had won me over. But a four-hour TV mini-series would have been better.
Thin, superficial and sentimental.
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General release. Check local listings for show times.