Director: Christian Ditter

Starring: Lily Collins, Sam Claflin, Tamsin Egerton, Christian Cooke, Jamie Winstone, Suki Waterhouse

Written by: Juliette Towhidi and (based on the novel “Where Rainbows End”) Cecelia Ahern.

Running Time: 102 mins

Cert: 15

Release date: 22nd October 2014

Last week we had the macho romance of Nicholas Sparks with The Best Of Me. This week, the chick-lit adaptation of Cecelia Ahern’s book, Where Rainbows End. I have never read Ms Ahern’s best seller and I am pretty sure it’s full of wit and charm and a sparkling of romance. Unfortunately, Love, Rosie has very little wit, charm or, for that matter, romance. Pretty hard going considering this is supposed to be a romantic comedy.

Rosie Dunne and Alex Stewart have been best friends ever since they were children. Growing up together, they share everything, including their dreams of going to college in America. Alex wants to be a doctor while Rosie wants to run a hotel. Alex manages to get into Havard while Rosie is pregnant and heading down the road of a single mother. As the years go by, the pair go through the ups and downs of life from various partners to family bereavement. All this time, the pair turn to each other for guidance and friendship, with an underlining love for each other that may never be fully realised.

With all those romantic comedies out there, this needed to be something special, something unique. Alas, this brings nothing new to the table, apart from an annoying soundtrack that is shoehorning each scene with a song that tells us exactly what the scene is going to be about. For example, when Rosie is by himself, we get Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again, Naturally. Or when Rosie finally realises her love, KT Tunstall’s Suddenly I See. Yes, it is that obvious. This is usually covering a series of montages that, if you removed from the film, it would have been reduced to a half hour short movie.

As for the rest of the film, it is full of clichés and one-dimensional supporting characters that add nothing to the story apart from them popping in and ruining the lives of the two main characters. We do get Jamie Winstone as the perky best friend of Rosie and we know she’s perky because her hair is dyed red.

Forgetting the other cast members, we have two leads that, having to deal with a script far too proud of itself, give it everything they’ve got. Lily Collins as Rosie is easy on the eye as well as full charm and likeability. She is certainly watchable but is forced to mop and be moody because she hasn’t made the right choices in her life. Sam Claflin, acting like a young foppish Hugh Grant and looking like Rob Bryden, is perfectly fine as Alex but the pair are given characters who are so shallow. Rosie is sent all gooey eyed by a chiseled six-pack while Alex likes the leggy, long-blonde haired ladies with little in the line of brain-cells.

It’s all so been-there, done-that, which is a shame considering that its written by the co-writer of Calendar Girls. You kind of want a little more and when the most obvious ending in the history of cinema finally comes, you care very little for anyone involved and you leave the cinema less with a delighted spring in your step but more a slow trudge that you’ve managed to survive this unimaginative love story. Best advice, stick with the books.

2/5