Sparks fly between an uptight English writer and a Spanish translator who rewrote his failed book into an erotic novel.
This film is pure cotton candy and bonbons and hot chocolate by a fire on a cold day. It is fun. It is funny. It is predictable. It isn’t great. It may even be forgettable but it is a film for our times. It is a movie we need right now. It is a romantic comedy not so different from the old Doris Day and Rock Hudson films in which the plot centers around boy meets girl, boy and girl don’t get along and fight, then, finally, boy and girl fall for each other and live happily ever after. Well, we never know for sure about the “happily ever after” part, but we always hope.
In this entry in the romantic comedy genre, Sam Claflin is an uptight English writer promoting his latest book, ‘Sensible Love,’ with minimal success, until he finds it has been translated into Spanish by an unknown translator and it becomes a huge success in Mexico. Therein lies the problem. His book is no longer uptight, but he still is! Claflin looks, dresses, and carries himself just as the character, Henry Copper, might. Even his hair looks uptight. My only criticism here is Claflin’s Henry channels almost perfectly another English actor, Hugh Grant. Grant is, unfortunately, a bit long in the tooth now to play Henry, but in another day, another time…we might have had the real cigar. Meanwhile, I would really have liked to see Claflin’s Henry, not Grant’s.
Verónica Echegui is exactly Henry’s opposite and they mix like oil and water from the first meeting. She is a secretly aspiring writer and her “translation” of ‘Sensible Love’ is only loosely based on the book she dismisses as “boring.” “Nothing happens,” she complains, and with that in mind, she not only translated, but she also transposed as well so the plot takes on a different focus and a different, very wide, and effusive audience.
These two principals pair well together and keep interest up, though much of the plot is pushed successfully forward by Echegui with Claflin as her foil. As noted, the film is predictable. That’s what made it fun for me. Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt, sometimes, as in “Book of Love,” it just takes us down a lovely, fun road we forgot existed. Plan some time to just have fun and don’t expect more.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Friday, February 4th
