It's a timely excuse to judge a book by it's cover and if a book had the phtoshopped cover of Chalet Gril the PR team would be running into marketing hell.But at the prise of taking a risk,Chalet Girl staring Felicity jones, pays off to bring a modest but enjoyable rom com to up hold the right of the cliche and what a matinee screening was made for.
Felicity Jones plays Kim, a skateaholic (don't get that mixed up with Ice skating though) a pretty,successful skateboarder who is taken out of the limelight of her career after the untimely death of her mother, the force that pushed her to the top of success, that has now forced her to rock bottom.Now working in fast food version of MacDonald's, Kim is told of the amazing work as a Chalet Girl.Whoopee now we know the meaning of the title. Kim travels to the alps of Switzerland where she unexpectedly falls in love but here's the catch he's to posh and rich for her and she's just another Chalet Girl.
Dreadful title, dreadful poster, yuck filled premise of a cataclysmic proportions with a predictable string of events that would make Katherine Heigl blush and it's filled to the bone with sappy, OMG sappy sentiment.It's looking like the perfect romantic comedy for the Hollyoaks generation, a squeaky clean rom com with nice country views. In actual fact this is just another romantic comedy, there's nothing really that separates this from No strings attached, well minus the sex.
The tradition of the rom com also isn't tarnished either and seeming that this type of predictable schmaltz is the standard of romantic comedies, Chalet Girl sticks to the path pretty faithfully. Eventually Kim learns how to snowboard in the Alps "A Chalet Girl who doesn't know how to Ski,what will they think of next" and we get the inevitable montage of the triumph over the the task which she had given up on because of the loss of her mum-every time she gets too high, the memories just flood back, right on time to. It's all perfectly cued to a pleasant, popular soundtrack of No 1 chart topping hits and adds to the appeal of the film as a pleasant,well meaning film,smiley,occasionally very funny and occasionally not very funny.
The cast is unusually strong for this type of film and you wonder why the likes of Bill Nighy were attached.Not that they aren't good, in fact the non comedic actor is surprisingly funny- as is the other Bill, Bill Bailey. The two main leads at least for this comedy you might actually like,see or want to fall for each other.It's free from the cynical jokes of Bell or Heigl and is all in all strongly cast. The top cast consists of Brooke shields, Bill Nighy and host of famous cameos but this isn't one for the stars of British celluloid, this is the film to show the works of it's fresh new comers.
Felicity Jones has starred in other films, noticeably starting off in Cemetery Junction and lastly staring in Soulboy and will probably be propelled to stardom later this year with the sundance weeper "Like Crazy". But it's the two leads who steer the film in the right direction. However, this "teen" comedy might just be to hip clashing with it's old school premise with references to Facebook "poke me" and the creation of what will go down as one of the most annoying brother in Laws in movie history (seriously in all your screen time and mutter it's a constant string of dialogue ,reduced to sex in a gondala).The predictability is the film's fashion, it's never daring to take risk's but possibly the biggest risk of all is that the film was made and that it finally works and is never directly offencive.
The film is released in time for Red Nose Day, so i propose that if your not in the mood for doing a run or that £5 donation wasn't enough then you might want to spend the price of £6.75 on a matinee screening.
** 1/2/****
THE LOW DOWN
Harmless fun for the people who are sick of the "new"
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