Wimbledon (2004)

I enjoyed this film. I always loved watching Wimbledon and this film reminded me of Goran Ivanisevic winning Wimbledon as a wild card some years back. I wonder how much this story was inspired by that event? In any case plot is connected to those two weeks in Wimbledon when tennis comes to town. I am glad that we have a film which portrays all those events.I remember when I was there in 1994 and tried to get in, but I was not able, could not find a ticket, and I did not feel like lining up for one, pardon queuing. I watched all on the screens outside. It was a lot of fun! I thank the actors for acting well in this film. I really enjoyed Peter character played so well by Paul Bettany, after all I could of been that Peter in a different life, eh? ;)

Wimbledon is the story of a pair of tennis players, 119th ranked Paul Bettany who is on the down slope of his career and young and up and coming Kirsten Dunst. Sounds like the recipe for a tennis version of A Star Is Born, but it doesn't quite work out that way.Bettany has seen his better days and is picked as a wild card seed for the Wimbledon tournament the goal of every British player. The younger and faster and stronger players are getting all the media attention, players like young Ms. Dunst over in the United Kingdom with her father Sam Neill keeping a watchful eye.Like Norman and Esther these two mismatched players fall in love, but this Norman Maine does not fall into dissipation. With her encouragement he forces a second wind for his career and finds himself miracle of miracles in the finals.You say these things don't happen in real life, but every now and then they do as Ron Howard's Cinderella Man attests, the real life story of Jim Braddock. In tennis I remember a much past the prime Jimmy Connors winning that last major tournament before packing it in.Audiences love a comeback story and Dunst and Bettany are an appealing pair.

With the TV having been filled over the last few days of news that,for the first time in 74 years,a British player has made it to the final of Wimbledon ,I felt that it would be a terrific time to tee-up and take a look at Woody Allen's 2005 film Match Point.About an hour after having originally planned to watch Match Point,I soon began to suspect that I would have to change my plans,due to being unable to remember where I last put the DVD!.Luckaly,as I was miserably falling to find Woody's movie,I discovered that my dad had recently picked up a charming looking Rom-Com on DVD,which I hope would help me to kick off the final day of Wimbledon with a winning shot.The plot:Finding himself dead on arrival for the upcoming Wimbledon tennis tournament by being right at the bottom of the world rankings,tennis player Peter Colt decides to announce that he is going to retire once the upcoming tournament has finished.Openly reviled about Peter finally deciding to hang up his racket,members of Peter's family start advising him to become a professional trainer for a recently opened,private tennis club.Heading for his first day of training at Wimbledon,Peter accidentally enters the hotel room of US Woman's tennis player Lizzie Bradbury.Trying to excuse himself from his embarrassing mistake,Lizzie instead surprises Colt by saying that she would like to see a lot more of him.Despite the constant attempts by Bradbury's dad (who is also her manager) of keeping them apart,Lizzie and Peter soon begin to go on a number of dates that give Colt an enthusiasm for tennis which he has not had in years.View on the film:Deciding to leave out any obnoxious moments or will they/wont they- ness,screenwriters Adam Brooks,Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin instead decide to focus on the warm,easy going,natural chemistry between Peter Colt and Lizzie Bradbury, (played by a great smooth Paul Bettany,and a kooky and grunting, (although no where near as much as the William's sisters) Kirsten Dunst) along with giving the terrific familiar faces (Bernard Lee,Robert Lindsay,Jon Favreau,a pre-Wanted James McAvoy and a US accent carrying Sam Neil) just enough material to make their appearances a joy to watch.Although the "extrem close up" shots of CGI tennis is sadly a pretty clunky gimmick,director Richard Loncraine and cinematography Darius Khondij, (who has also worked on David Fincher's Seven,and by pure chance,Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris!) make the stunningly filmed on-location Wimbledon matches the centre of the film,with Flackett cleverly deciding to use moments where Peter's very funny inner monologue's can be heard,and also not cutting the shoots every few seconds,but instead allowing the matches to have a real flow which gets more tense as Peter gets closer to being the first British player in almost 70 years to be in the final of Wimbledon.

Three words say it all: British romantic comedy. If the genre is not your cup of tea, you won't like this flick either. But if you loved other British romantic comedies like "Love Actually", "Notting Hill", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "About a Boy", and so on, then you'll probably like "Wimbledon" too, even if the storyline is simple and the characters are not as deep as they could be. Just don't take it too seriously, and suspend your belief about Wimbledon players not sleeping the night before an important match because they play Romeo and Juliet, and you'll fully enjoy the movie: entertaining, funny, romantic, British. The storyline is simple yet effective. Cute but usually unlucky British tennis guy meets cheeky yet romantic American tennis golden girl, and gets lucky. Not only does he have sex before each match, but he even wins the matches. After some (romantic) troubles and some (tennis) adventures, our hero incredibly wins Wimbledon, she doesn't, but she is going to in the future. And they'll live happily ever after. Of course! If you like tennis, the movie has a plus side. You'll root for the hero when he plays the match of his life. (Spoiler alert!) Of course our man is going to win, because he's been unlucky in his tennis career, because he is British (and this is a British film), because his opponent is American (and this is a British film, again) who acts like a spoiled child, and -most of all- because the guy is in love, and in romantic comedies Love Wins All! Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst are not Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, they are not Boris Becker and Steffi Graf either, but they are cute and a good choice for the parts. If you love London, you'll enjoy the locations too. My vote is 7.5 out of 10.