Leap Year’ needs a jump start

While visiting my friends Holly Hope and Ken Sands in Washington, D.C., I sat down with them to watch the romantic comedy “Leap Year.” I’d passed on the chance to see the film in the theater, or even on a recent plane trip, but I thought I’d give the movie a chance.

And why not? It was the perfect opportunity, in the comfort of my friends’ home, on an evening that required nothing of me but to sit back and enjoy.

And there had to be something to enjoy, right? I mean, the movie stars Amy Adams , the perky star of such films as “Enchanted” and “Junebug” and “Doubt” and “Sunshine Cleaning.” Her costar is Matthew Goode , the costar of such films as Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” the “Brideshead Revisited” remake and “A Single Man.”

The director, too, seemed to be a good indicator. Anand Tucker is the director of, among other films, “Hilary and Jackie,” “Shopgirl” and the final installment of the powerful “Red Riding” series, “In the Year of Our Lord, 1983.” So, I told myself, how bad can this film be?

Pretty dammed bad, it turns out. Written by the team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (“A Very Brady Sequel,” “Josie and the Pussycats” and “Made of Honor”), “Leap Year” is one of those predictable romances in which two polar opposite characters suffer hate at first sight, stumble into a ridiculous situation that throws them together (in this case a storm and financial necessity) and end up falling in love.

It’s the kind of film where, in the process of pulling a bed away from the wall, the stuck-up American (Adams) doesn’t just wreck the room or throw the circuit breaker of the tavern in which she is staying or even fry her Blackberry, but she causes the whole village to lose power. It’s the kind of movie where every cliched Irish reference (except maybe for leprechauns) is drummed up. And it’s the kind of film where, when both characters jump out of a car, you just know that they’re going to forget to set the break, which likely will lead to disaster.

I say “likely” because I don’t really know. It was at that point that I made my apologies and went upstairs to bed.

You might say that I, uh, leaped at the chance to escape the horror called “Leap Year.”

Below : The trailer for “Leap Year.”