Toto’s Movie Review: ‘One Day’ (Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess)

The main characters in the new romantic drama “One Day” may be sweet, fun-loving souls for 364 days of the year.

But we only see them “One Day” at a time over a two-decade span. And they are insufferable during these 24-hour snippets, the kind of folks you’d steer clear of it you met them at a cocktail party. The new romantic weepie, based on the book by David Nicholls, makes the mere thought of them ending up together distasteful. That’s movie magic in reverse.

It’s July 15th, 1988, and new college graduates Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) stumble into each other’s arms after a night of celebratory drinking. They don’t have sex, though. Instead, they share the same bed and agree they’ll be friends, not lovers.

You see, on page 4 of the script it says that very same thing! Who cares if the moment doesn’t make sense?

Flash forward to July 15th, 1987, and that friendship has taken root. The story lurches forward precisely one year at a time after that, with each new day revealing the progress of their relationship. Emma works at a Tex Mex restaurant post-graduation while Dexter finds fame as a fatuous late-night host. They have less and less in common with each passing “Day.” Dexter’s appetite for booze and drugs pushes them further apart.

Emma eventually settles for a brutally unfunny comic (Rafe Spall) while Dexter beds an assembly line of hotties. Yet those romances soon dim, leaving the pair to question their platonic ties.

“One Day” certainly doesn’t lack for ambition. Director Lone Scherfig (“An Education”) must deliver complex characters and motivations in a confined narrative space. But on nearly every level it can’t meet its own challenges. Movie goers don’t mind loving a rascal, but even Det. Columbo would be hard pressed to spot a redeeming quality in Dexter. He’s selfish, hopelessly immature and lacks self-awareness. When some punks steal his clothes, he whines about losing his favorite garments like a widdle girl.

But let’s not let Emma off the hook, either. She’s a beauty pinned beneath ungainly eyeglasses and low self-esteem, the latter quality never explored by the facile script. “Love and Other Drugs” showed Hathaway could bring depth to a woman at war with her emotional longings. In “One Day,” her Emma deserves pity and little else. She also could use a few accent lessons. Hathaway’s British delivery isn’t awful, but it’s distracting enough to be a concern.

Patricia Clarkson appears too briefly as Dexter’s sickly mum, a roaring cliche the actress subdues with her natural grace. But Clarkson can’t linger long enough to bring out Dexter’s humanity.

“One Day” does suggest the passing of time in gentle ways, tweaking hairstyles and fashions to let us clue into the period in question. It’s a subtle technique that works wonders. If only the characters doing all the modest changing lived up to it.

It’s tragic that the film’s final minutes shows a real connectio between Dexter and Emma. Had those scenes appeared in the first reel we might have cheered to see them veer into each other’s arms. As it stands, the moments at the end of “One Day” feel like an exclamation point on a very tortured romance.

(Photo: Jim Sturgess (left) and Anne Hathaway (right) star as Dexter and Emma in the romance “One Day,” a Focus Features release directed by Lone Scherfig. Photo credit: Giles Keyte)