Bomb Squad: One Day

JOY RIDE Sturgess and Hathaway drive each other wild.

Photo: Giles Keyte

If box-office returns are to be believed, contemporary audiences don’t demand much from a romantic comedy, but a baseline ought to be that the protagonists spend time together. So much for One Day, in which Anne Hathaway’s anxious aspiring writer and Jim Sturgess’s coke-addled late-night host chase each other from university graduation through the next two decades. As per David Nicholls’s source novel, director Lone Scherfig checks in on the noncouple every year on St. Swithin’s Day, charting their waxing and waning friendship. The trouble is that between Hathaway’s wobbly British accent and Sturgess’s cocky smarm, you don’t care if either ends up with anyone, let alone a supposed soul mate. Nicholls’s screenplay doesn’t even attempt to establish why the two are meant for each other; we’re meant to accept their destiny as a structural necessity, a romcom MacGuffin. Considering the collective CVs of the filmmaker (An Education) and cast, it’s hard to fathom how such a talented trio could combine to such lifeless effect. The movie is like a blind date that never gets off the ground. (On VOD, DVD and Blu-ray Tue 29.)