Last Chance Harvey

Rating:

* * * *

Verdict:

Two great actors turn a sentimental script into irresistible entertainment.

The most saccharine movies can work when the acting is good: this bittersweet rom-com is at times far closer than it ought to be to sentimental eyewash, but in the hands of two fine actors at the top of their game, it's irresistible.

Emma Thompson gave us the only emotionally authentic moment in the appalling

Love, Actually

, as she absorbed in perfect silence the realisation of her husband's infidelity. And Dustin Hoffman has always been living proof of George Burns' dictum that if you can fake sincerity you've got it made.

Here he plays Harvey Shine, a frustrated jazz pianist who writes jingles for a New York advertising firm, and lands in London for the wedding of his daughter.

He's scarcely disembarked before he gets a couple of bits of bad news: it's well semaphored in the opening minutes that he's going to lose his job, but the second blow he's not quite ready for.

Then his path crosses that of Kate Walker (Thompson).

The script has cleverly had them nearly meet twice before but their first exchange of words is deliciously barbed, witty and... well, you know.

If it's hard to buy Thompson as a woman left on the shelf, it's near-impossible to take some of the film's sloppier climactic moments: Hoffman's speech at the wedding is so shamelessly manipulative it should have been cut by the censor on grounds of taste. But he's rumpled and slightly frantic and (at 72!) can still do cute-as-a-puppy. Matched with Thompson, who can do pain and loss with the effortless grace of a gymnast, they just get under your skin.

Any film that can make London look romantic has to have something going for it.

Take someone you love.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson

Director:

Joel Hopkins

Running time:

93 mins

Rating:

PG (coarse language)