For those who enjoy the two or three romantic comedies a year that star Hugh Grant and his oh-so-charming British accent but think that there's something missing, fret not. That problem has been solved. It turns out that what was missing from those movies was sports.
"Wimbledon," starring Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst is almost the answer to those prayers. After all, it is a movie about tennis.
As to the believability of the film, it is an absolute farce. Paul Bettany plays Peter Colt, an aging tennis pro who at his peak was rated number 11 in the world. Faced with his advancing years and declining ability, Colt aims for one last shot at Wimbledon. He should have almost no chance of winning.
Kirsten Dunst plays Peter's newfound lover, Lizzie Bradbury, who is also a tennis star. Here's where the film gets interesting. Peter Colt defies all logic and begins winning matches against opponents that are much better than he is, driven solely by his love for Lizzie. In this, he has become the first man ever to succeed in life while trying to impress a girl. The average man would make an ass of himself under such circumstances, but he goes and wins a National Championship. Go Figure.
While the storyline is pretty standard, this movie really stands out for director Richard Loncraine's use of Matrix-like slow motion scenes, probably becoming the first romantic-comedy to employ the famous shot. "Wimbledon" uses this bullet-time - or tennis-ball-time - animation so that the viewer can watch the path of the ball being shot back and forth over the court. It is a new and compelling way to view a tennis match.
The flipside to this coin is, during these slow-motion scenes, Loncraine cut out all sound and replaced it with the Colt's thoughts. These thoughts are usually frantic and accompanied by insane zooms into the character's pupil. This habit turned "Wimbledon" into the most inadvertently terrifying romantic comedy that's ever been made.
Kirsten Dunst finally was cast in a non-serious role for this movie, which is something that should be done more frequently. The constant smirk that's on her face and her inability to enunciate properly is actually cute and amusing in this movie, where it could become terribly irritating in more serious films like Spider-Man. She also seems quite comfortable playing a Daddy's girl. Bradbury's father is played by Sam Neill, who has the only believably sincere part in the entire film.
Paul Bettany meanwhile does his best to be British in the movie, using the words "bloody" and "wanker" as often as possible, endearing him to all those who love British accents.
The film's greatest drawback might be the fact that most of the 13-25 year-old women who will undoubtedly compose the largest audience for this movie will not understand the complicated scoring system that makes up the sport of tennis. The movie does a good job of making this less confusing with a constant play-by-play announcer played by John McEnroe. McEnroe, by the way, gets about half of the very sparse punch lines in "Wimbledon."
John Favreau, who plays Ron Roth, delivers the rest of the comedy in the film. Roth is Colt's selfish agent whose only desire is to make money. It is an accurate portrayal of a sports agent, and while he's no Jerry Macguire, he's certainly funny enough to earn a few good laughs.
"Wimbledon" could have been a disaster if not for Dunst's pretty face and Bettany's charming incompetence, but instead it turned out to be a better-than-horrible movie. Though a bad sports movie and a bad comedy, it has just enough of both to earn status as a remarkably average movie.
