Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott are reunited with a film which could hardly be further removed from their first collaboration, Gladiator. A Good Year is a sweet- natured piece of whimsy, a gentle comedy with a cheeky bouquet of British-abroad buffoonery and more than a hint of unabashed sentimentality. It’s a bizarre choice of material, given the reputation that both have for serious, muscular movies, preferably containing at least a couple of instances of violence.

Adapted from a novel by Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence, the film tells of Max Skinner, a British city boy and self-confessed bastard, who inherits a rambling vineyard in the sleepy South of France from the uncle he once adored.

Crowe plays Max as a cross between a cut-throat Gordon Gekko and every bumbling fish-out-of-water character that Hugh Grant has put his name to. Crowe is uncomfortable casting. You tend to resist laughing at his antics, perhaps because of the suspicion that he would probably snap your neck like a stick of asparagus if he thought you were not taking him seriously enough.

Scott makes a sun-dappled dream of the French countryside, but, like Crowe, struggles with the comic elements. Pratfalls and broad cultural stereotypes are the order of the day in a screenplay that, in fairness, doesn’t give either the director or his lead actor much in the way of comedic ingredients to work with.

WENDY IDE

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