Imagine Me & You

This review has been ‘repurposed’ from my other site, theOneliner.com

The most interesting thing about Imagine Me and You, which I feel I should warn you is in fact not interesting in the slightest, is that it was trailed (in the U.K. at least) for around four-and-one-half thousand years before vanishing utterly. Having quietly shuffled off the rotunda of memory, it came as something of a surprise to see it resurface its ultimately unremarkable head. Still, Girls Kissing, eh, phwoar nudge nudge wink wink say no more what’s it like.

The girls referred to in this case being the newly wed Rachel (Piper Perabo) and florist Luce (Lena Headey), the two meeting at Rachel’s wedding to Heck (Matthew Goode) and doing the whole love at first sight thing. Of course, with everybody being frightfully English about the whole thing these feelings are immediately repressed and buried under layers of tea and civility.

You can, I assume, fill in the rest of the love triangle based plot details yourself from the usual template, with the minor variation of the sexual orientation of the affected star-crossed lovers. For your records, the conflicts here are a) Rachel not wishing to hurt Heck, b) Luce not wishing to break up any established relationship and c) Rachel not wishing to succumb to the love that dare not speak its name.

It’s billed, in some quarters at least as a romcom, although it’s certainly far heavier on the ‘rom’ than the ‘com’ part of that bastard conjunction. As these things go, it’s not too badly handled, Headey and Perabo having a believable chemistry, with the decaying relationship betwixt Heck and Rachel shown in a reasonably sensible light. The ‘com’ part is left up largely to the supporting cast, Heck’s philandering mate Cooper (Darren Boyd) and Heck’s parents, the overwhelmingly brusque and bossy Tessa (U.K. telly-lynchpin Celia Imrie) and Ned (Anthony Head), who appears to be punch-drunk or suffering somesuch befuddlement. It would be a poor lookout for someone watching this purely on comic potential, but having heeded these words this will no longer be you.

As a straight drama (…must…resist…urge…to…make…cheap…pun…) it’s something of a mixed bag. There’s nothing in particular present that ought to provoke fits of hatred to be directed towards this, although there’s little to laud either. There’s also damn near nothing, sexual orientation aside perhaps, that you won’t have seen four-and-one-half thousand times before in other flicks.

Which drops it firmly into ‘mediocre’ territory. Boy, are we ever tired of that territory. Given the bewildering array of films you could be watching, if you want a unique reason to see this over all others you are fresh out of luck, boyo. Still, if you don’t mind a certain familiarity with the material even before watching it for the first time, there’s a certain amount of enjoyment to be scraped from Imagine Me & You‘s bones. The skeleton, however, you’ve seen before.

Still, girls kissing, eh? Phwoar, etc, etc.