A Good Year (12A)

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe last combined their talents on the multiple Oscar-winning Gladiator. In A Good Year, the tale of an uptight London banker who inherits a French vineyard, the pair reprise their act with a few notable differences. Instead of a swords-and-sandals spectacular in which limbs are hacked off with gay abandon, A Good Year is a socks-and-sandals slog that has a gaping hole where its heart should be.

Crowe plays Max, master of the City universe. Max is mad, or at any rate he's slightly wacky. He calls his traders "lab rats" and gees them up by telling them that "today is greedy ******* day". On learning that his late uncle, Henry (Albert Finney), has left him a chateau and a vineyard, Max nips across to France to arrange a quick sale. It's just business, yet sight of the old place stirs happy memories of the summers he spent there as a child, when Henry would serve him watered-down wine and the kind of advice usually hidden from the rest of the world in fortune cookies. "A man learns nothing from winning," soothes old Henry. "The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom." No wonder the kid ended up a merchant banker.

The sale turns complicated, forcing Max to hang around and renew acquaintances with the locals. One of them (Marion Cotillard) has filled out very nicely and, before he knows it, Max is waking up to what is missing in his life.

A Good Year is based on the novel by Peter Mayle that appealed to a certain type of little Briton, the kind that find foreigners naturally hilarious and abroad a place to be endured until it can be made a bit more like home. Scott's film pitches in at the same level. The French are either smelly or ooh la la sexy; Americans have good teeth, big mouths and, in cafes, they bray things such as "Gar-kon! Do you speak American?"

It's good preparation for Crowe's performance as a funny foreigner. Alas, it is not enough. Called upon to play a quirky English gent, the big Kiwi-Aussie lug, the one who in his spare time plays in a band aptly named 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, only goes and attempts a turn that's a little bit Harry Potter, a little bit Cary Grant, and every ham Shakespearean actor you've ever seen. Making matters worse is his wardrobe. He starts the film in Savile Row suits. Once in France, due to a lost-luggage crisis and there being unaccountably no clothes shops in the country, he begins to raid Uncle Henry's closet. So now he's not just a dork doing a partial impersonation of one of the greatest light-comedy actors who ever lived, he's a dork in a cricket sweater, baggy trousers and sandals. Judy, Judy, Judy, it's a mess, mess, mess.

There's only one Grant alive who could have pulled off the role of Max, but presumably Hugh and his fringe were busy on a beach somewhere.

A Good Year feels, indeed, like a holiday video, albeit one made by an Academy-award nominated director. The folks back home are left with the notion that Russell and Ridley had a jolly nice time on this shoot. Great meals, lots of laughs, Crowe gets to confound his image as a wild man with a gentle comedy. Now they want to cheer us up with their efforts. I can think of worse aims. This film will probably lighten up a dark winter night, but then so would setting the neighbour's hedge on fire. Crowe does comedy. What a cork-up.

This is based on the book A Year in Provence which was a touchy-feely BBC Sunday evening comedy drama series with John Thaw some years back.

Thaw played Peter Mayle who had given up the advertising rat race to settle in France.

In this version Russell Crowe plays Max Skinner, a ruthless merchant banker who leaves the rat race and goes to France, where he is still ruthless.

Nothing really happens.

We start the film disliking this character and our feelings don't change much because neither does he. What's the point of the story?

Comedy is not Ridley Scott's strong suit and I find Russell Crowe a singularly charmless actor, and despite the presence of the usually reliable Tom Hollander and Albert Finney this seems beyond redemption.