Imagine Me & You

Rating R Formats DVD Genre comedy Starring Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode, Celia Imrie, Anthony Head Directed by Ol Parker Publisher 20th Century Fox External Links Official Imagine Me & You Website Official 20th Century Fox Website

The first shot of Imagine Me & You shows an anxious Londoner Rachel (played with a passable English accent by Piper Perabo) on her wedding day sitting in front of her alarm clock, just waiting for it to go off so she can begin what has been her dream day probably ever since she was 12. It's an excellent opening to what I found to be a good, but not great romantic comedy that is at the very least different than most movies of that genre.

Rachel is to be married to the unfortunately named Heck (played well by Matthew Goode), a very pleasant, handsome man who seems to be everything a 12 year old girl would dream would one day be her groom in her dream wedding. It's a point driven home by the innocent crush Rachel's 12 year old sister Henrietta (newcomer Boo Jackson) has on Heck. Everything seems to be going along swimmingly for Rachel's dream day, that is until she spots the wedding's florist from across the room, Lucy (played by the impossibly attractive Lena Headey).

What follows is a sequence of events in which Rachel become more and more intrigued with Lucy, who is a lesbian and has already fallen for Rachel. The two quickly become friends running into each other in the kind of coincidental situations that could only happen in a romantic comedy. Lucy even genuinely likes Heck and admits, "you don't break people up." But as Rachel grows more interested in Lucy in ways that are new and confusing to her, her marriage to Heck begins to disintegrate thus leaving an opening for her and Lucy.

The most refreshing part of the movie is that the fact Lucy and Rachel are of the same sex is rather inconsequential to the characters and to the love story itself. A lesser movie would've gotten lost in the whole "I can't believe you're falling for a woman" debate. A lesser movie would've dealt with a Heck's broken ego about not being able to satisfy his wife as much as another female can.

That said, my biggest problem with the movie is that I didn't quite buy into the relationship between the two women (and not because they were women). A relationship in any romantic comedy, particularly in a love story as unconventional as this one, hinges on the chemistry developed in the short amount of screen time the two romantic leads. There isn't much given to make us believe that Rachel, who we assume has never had a lesbian experience before (not even in college), would fall for a woman. We don't see how or why Rachel would be physically attracted to a woman. In a film, it takes more than just having a character say they love someone for us to believe it.

Also, the comedy works best in the dialogue and relationships between the characters, but falls flat when Parker slides into slapstick (such as an embarrassingly awful scene in a video store in which Rachel rents a lesbian porn film and predictably her mother shows up).

The DVD is very director-centric. The best feature is what is labeled as "Director's Introduction" in which writer/director Ol Parker reads an essay, played to a montage of clips from the movie, wherein he describes the inspiration for the story was his own experience falling in love with his wife (in real life, Parker is married to Thandie Newton). It's really quite clever and funny, and often touching in parts when Parker reminds us "love just is... and thank God for that". The DVD also includes several deleted scenes with optional introduction and commentary by the director as well as a feature length audio commentary in which Parker admits just about every directorial mistake he makes.

The video is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic video in what I found to be a less than impressive transfer. Many scenes dominated by white backgrounds were very washed out, but then maybe this was a conscious decision by the cinematographer. The double sided disc also includes a Full Frame version, but who wants to watch that? The audio is presented in 5.1 Dolby Digital which is a dialogue and music dominated soundtrack both of which were handled fine.

Overall, I can say that I've seen far worse romantic comedies. I applaud the genuine efforts of Parker to make a romantic comedy about two unlikely people falling in love reminding us that since love is love it could be any two people. Unfortunately, purely as a romantic comedy he doesn't really knock it out of the park.