The Decoy Bride review

The Decoy Bride (12A, 89 mins)
Director: Sheree Folkson

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

When a big movie star (Alice Eve), due to marry David Tennant’s writer, gets sick of always being hounded by paparazzi, they head somewhere remote to get married in peace and end up on the fictional Hebridean island of Hegg. There Katie (Kelly Macdonald) is a lovelorn singleton who gets roped into being a decoy to divert the press, and she and Tennant get rather arbitrarily shoved together while the real bride goes missing. With a nice light tone that’s frothy without being too zany, this is a predictable and undemanding bit of fluff that’s inoffensive enough but all just a bit wet and underdeveloped, with little reason to invest in the circumstances. Macdonald shows a real flair for light comedy but Tennant is out of his depth and essentially it’s proof that Britain is every bit as capable of making insipid rom-com fare as Hollywood.

She’s Out of My League review

She’s Out of My League (15, 104 mins)
Director: Jim Field Smith
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The latest spin on the boy-meets-girl formula is this likeable boy-thinks-he-doesn’t-deserve-girl romantic comedy. Kirk (Jay Baruchel, last spotted voicing the young hero in How to Train Your Dragon) is still in mourning for the girl he broke up with two years before when he meets the stunning Molly (Alice Eve) through his job at airport security. He’s a bit of a goofball but he’s a nice, funny guy who can’t believe she likes him, and so constantly thinks she’s out of his league, which forms the basis for the sometimes contrived conflict. It’s a premise that’s stretched out a little too thinly on occasion in a movie that stalls a bit when going for gross or farcical situations, particularly when dealing with Kirk’s boorish friends and insane family. But it’s sweet, sometimes very funny and most of all, Kirk and Molly are a couple to root for which means it’s built on solid foundations.