According to supposed Irish custom, women may propose to their reluctant boyfriends on February 29. The woman in Leap Year is Anna (Amy Adams), a Boston apartment stager, and her intended fiancé, Jeremy (Adam Scott), is a surgeon more in love with his BlackBerry than with her. But after four years, he hasn't pulled the Tiffany trigger. What's a girl to do? Jeremy has flown to a medical conference in Dublin, which neatly coincides with leap day, so Anna follows, intending to ambush him on the fated date. Needless to say, things don't go as planned. Leap Year belongs to a Prada backlash, a subgenre of women's pictures — epitomized by The Proposal — in which smart, stylish women must be muddied, abased, ridiculed and degraded in order to get their men. The new man is waggish innkeeper Declan (Matthew Goode), who agrees to drive stranded Anna to Dublin. She's uptight and hyper-organized; he's a grinning oaf who chews with his mouth open. See where this is going? Written by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan (Made of Honor), and directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl), the movie seems a rehash of 1930s conventions — It Happened One Night in Ireland. (Oh, no! There's only one bed left at the B&B!) Leap Year appears to have been designed for that huge mother-daughter matinee market, ahem. Trust me: Take mom to It's Complicated instead.
