Girl's Night In

After the successful fusion of uninhibited bawdiness and showbiz satire in The 40 Year Old Virgin and pregnancy-centric rom-com Knocked Up, current chieftain of Hollywood comedy Judd Apatow looks to have scored another hit with Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Once again he takes a situation that really shouldn’t be funny – in this case the break-down of a long-term relationship – and sucks from it every last drop of laughs.

When Peter Bretter (Jason Segel), a genial underachiever who composes incidental music for American TV shows, is dumped by his beautiful actress girlfriend, Sarah Marhall (Kristen Bell), he is devastated. Standing stark naked in his kitchen and weeping buckets, he begs her to stay, but to no avail – her success has outstripped his and she has bigger fish to fry. He seeks solace in one-night stands but is haunted by Sarah’s memory. Tired of womanising, he takes advice from his step-brother Brian (Bill Hader) and escapes to Hawaii, only to discover that Sarah and her rock star boyfriend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) are staying in the same hotel. The set up is textbook farce. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of Rachel (Mila Kunis), the pretty hotel receptionist with whom Peter strikes up a relationship.

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The beguilingly titled Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is based on writer/director’s Dai Saijie’s best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name. Set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution during the 1970’s, the film centres around two adolescents who have committed the sin of being born to “reactionary” parents – doctors who dared to suggest that Chairman Mao might not be entirely perfect. On account of their background, the boys are sent on a rural “re-education” camp where they are to learn the virtues of Maoist thinking and hard work, which includes much lugging of human excrement up a hill.

However, their gruelling stay is brightened by meeting the captivating daughter of the local tailor, known simply as the Little Seamstress (the boys never bother to find out her actual name). An uneducated peasant, the two bourgeois city-boys seek to open her mind through forbidden Western novels which they have stolen from another member of the camp — classics from the likes of Dickens, Flaubert and, yes, Balzac, the Little Seamstress’ favourite. The boys also read “The Count of Monte Christo” to the old grandfather, which inspires him to add many elegant details to his garments.

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Like slipping into a pair of old shoes, 27 Dresses is the epitome of comforting predictability, following the rom-com rulebook to the letter.

Jane (Katherine Heigl) is a serial bridesmaid, with 27 gaudy hideous dresses hanging in her cupboard to prove it, who spends so much of her time caring for other people that she’s neglected to find a husband for herself. She is a wedding obsessive, subscribing to bridal magazines and cutting out wedding stories from newspapers in spite of the fact that she’s single. Jane is secretly pining after her dull boss, the obligatory romantic red-herring in the tale, who is cruelly snatched from her by her sexy younger sister. Meanwhile she remains oblivious to the attentions of Kevin, a dashing, cynical wedding reporter from the local rag, who has found himself a scoop with Jane’s story.

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Perhaps the ultimate Girl’s Night In movie has arrived on cinema screens, following Monday night’s premiere at the Odeon West End in Leicester Square here in London – of course we’re flattered that Carrie and the girls chose to unveil their first big screen performance here in the UK, but we can’t help feeling that perhaps their native New York would have been a more fitting choice.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a movie about geography, it’s about the two ‘L’s – Labels and Love. The girls are back with a bang four years on since the series wrapped and it doesn’t seem that much has changed. Sarah Jessica Parker has once again stepped into the Manalos of Carrie Bradshaw, Noo Yoik writer on a quest for true love – “real love… ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love…” – armed with a passion for fashion, Cosmopolitans and internal monologue. Maneater Samantha has relocated to the west coast, having shacked up with aspiring movie star Smith in LA, Miranda is having problems juggling her professional, domestic and social life, whilst Charlotte, seems to be the only one enjoying marital bliss.

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