This movie had plenty of potential. Surely it was a consistently grim and depressing film but the themes about love and the main cast kept us interested. This movie had potential in which the aura of hope was strong enough to keep us wanting to see a nice resolution---in the midst of the depression. One Day could have been a wonderful film about love and friendship across different fields of time and distance—something that only the film Before Sunset accomplished in every degree imaginable. And then came the third act. That bloody awful third act.
One Day is a film that was running a certain direction, and then totally flips the switch in the final third of the movie, resulting in a jumbled mess of inconsistent themes, inconsistent pace, and just a story that seems like its only goal is to drive the audience to tears and suicidal thoughts. While it was accurately faithful to the book, sometimes this is a bad thing as novels do have their pitiful moments (See: No Country For Old Men). Worst of all, the screenplay was from the author so any hope of changing some of the material or some of the extremely weak parts of the novel were pretty much dead and gone.
This movie is about a friendship between two characters that spans a couple decades, and we the viewer see where they are in their lives as they meet each other on the same day every year. Despite their scenario and financial/martial/emotional status, they find a way to see each other to catch up. Like I said before, the script was from the same writer as the 2009 novel, David Nicholls. Nicholls had a fresh concept a fresh twist to the romantic drama genre, but in order to keep one step ahead of the reader he shifts gears in the final moments of the novel—winding up with a book I would most likely wind up hating. And all those events lead to a script that I wound up hating.
The 2011 Summer Season has been a very disappointing one, but we’ve had great performances left and right that have saved certain films (Bad Teacher, On Stranger Tides) and propelled others to new heights (Horrible Bosses). Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess kept my interest in the movie, as they delivered fine performances that chronicled them at their happiest and at their downright most depressed. Sturgess had a lot more to work with because of the events on his side and he handled them quite tell. Hathaway despite using an accent (not necessary if you ask me) also did a fine job, and being a naturally beautiful woman had to find a way to look unattractive and unappealing to the audience—meaning she also had to do some tough work. The rest of the cast did a decent job, but our main stars kept the film afloat……until the third act.
Lone Scherfig, who directed the under-the-radar Oscar bait An Education, did quite well in spite of the frustrating material she was dealt with. She handled her shots quite well, and sometimes let the visuals describe the emotions and mindset of our main characters. Sadly Scherfg’s direction was marred by the editing, which oddly left out some vital material, and shuffled around some scenes awkwardly. If your movie is being done in chronological order, why mess that up in the final act? Why skip out some of the better character-relationship-building scenes, only to use them for the final act, once their relationship has already been established? I’m telling you, this third act is poison.
Bottom Line: An ending can make or break a movie; it can erase some of the shortcomings in the first two acts, or ultimately weaken the entire structure of the film. One Day’s final act will leave you frustrated, will leave you upset, and it’s not just because of the events that happen, but in the manner that they are presented. Everything you were learning about the movie, all the lessons and themes and nice moments the script was giving us are flung out of the window in favor of an unexpected finale that crushes the soul of the entire body of work. The ending of this review will remain consistent with the rest of the article: Do not watch unless you are a fan of depression or subpar material.
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