The Star Wars prequels were fine.Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt possess exactly the kind of innate likability ideal for movie romances. Both are fine actors, and McGregor in particular has played a variety of notes throughout his career, from brash to heroic to weaselly. But in a lighter movie like Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, to watch them onscreen is to want them to be happy.
It makes them both particularly valuable when said movie is so light and wispy that your eyes might otherwise lose focus. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is based on the comic novel of the same name by Paul Torday, but in cinematic form it hardly implies the presence of more than a short story, and not a particularly comic one. Fishery expert Dr. Alfred Jones (McGregor) and real estate guru Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Blunt) are thrown together by the grand scheme of Sheikh Muhammad (Amr Waked) to bring the sport of salmon fishing to his people in Yemen. Dr. Jones is happy to explain why this plan makes no sense whatsoever due to inhospitable climate; Ms. Chetwode-Talbot is happy to explain why actually, maybe certain parts of Yemen have a more hospitable climate than you might expect.
It sounds a bit like the kind of plucky-British-underdog farce so popular in the mid-nineties (Blunt is too young to have been involved, but McGregor did his time with Brassed Off!), and indeed, the screenplay is by Full Monty scribe Simon Beaufoy. But the only actor onscreen who has chosen to play this material that way is Kristin Scott Thomas as Patricia Maxwell, the Prime Minister's hard-charging press secretary who takes a shine to the unlikely project as a potential PR boon. This might make her performance sound refreshing, and it might've been, were any of her material actually funny. Instead, the Patricia character sticks out at odd angles, doing warmed-over fast-talking screwball shtick. The movie even stops itself dead in its tracks to show us her unfunny IM conversations, and, most inexplicably, give her a one-scene voiceover, as if punching up the movie's comedy at the last minute, unsuccessfully.
Thomas aside, though, the lack of cutesiness and quirkiness in the rest of the movie is something of a relief; the other comic moments show less strain. McGregor and Blunt are both dry and low-key, and McGregor in particular does nice work as the stiff, fastidious Dr. Jones, giving his awkwardness with jokes a certain dignity and sweetness (Blunt's Harriet has a less defined personality -- she basically just seems nice and reasonable -- but this is where that innate likability business comes in quite handy). Their relationship has a familiar testy-then-affectionate arc, but the movie actually manages to draw it out delicately; it only occasionally threatens to become agonizing in its delaying of the inevitable. It takes the two of them half the movie to stop calling each other "Dr. Jones" and "Ms. Chetwode-Talbot" - they both have previous romantic engagements, an unhappy marriage for him and a deployed soldier boyfriend for her -- and their studious formality makes it clear: these are nerds in love.
If only the movie gave them more to be nerdy about. Director Lasse Hallstrom doesn't have an eye for procedural detail; he's too distracted by the warmth and kindness of humanity at large. As such, the logistics of bringing salmon fishing into the Yemen become more a curiosity than a full-fledged story. Setbacks are momentary, complications are mild, and interest is fleeting. This allows the romance plenty of space to blossom in the first half of the film -- frankly, Alfred and Harriet don't seem to have much to do besides fall in love -- but leaves the movie stranded when it wants to reach some kind of an emotional climax. This strands McGregor and Blunt, too: a sweet, charming couple in search of a movie sturdier than a wisp.
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