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About Adam

Movie: A

Sound: A

Picture: A

Reviewed By: David

Miramax Films and Director Gerard Stembridge team up to bring you a romantic comedy that is surpassingly unusual! About Adam.

And Adam said: The woman you put beside me, gave me fruit, and I ate." -- Genesis 3:12

The story provides four different views of Adam which turn into four different views on love destined, liberating, ecstatic and unexpected. As Adam mischievously winds his way across trend setting Dublin bumping into each and every family member unexpectedly and one thing About Adam becomes very clear, he is giving every member of the Owens family exactly what they want.

It all begins with Lucy Owen (Kate Hudson), a torch singer in a hip Dublin cafe who's had countless love affairs none of which have ever come close to grand passion. And enter Adam (Stuart Townsend) her seemingly perfect man. From the minute she spots the handsome stranger Lucy's world begins to change. Adam is boyish kind and eminently lovable and he fulfills Lucy's need for wild spontaneity while allowing her for the first time to feel the lure of commitment. Lucy has fallen in love. Best of all Adam seems to really fit into Lucy's close-knit Dublin family winning over her two sisters literary Laura (Frances O'Connor) and sophisticated Alice (Charlotte Bradley) as well as her mother (Rosaleen Linehan) with his devastating charms. Even younger brother David (Alan Maher) is mesmerized. But is there more About Adam than the Owens family can ever imagine?

Although Adam is given a clarifying speech it’s never clear what he really wants out of this complicated situation he creates by romancing all three sisters (geeezz). Still their is no doubt as to why Adam’s appeal is so widespread and this is where the film is the best. The elements that he shows Lucy and each of her kin don’t clash but rather seem pretty logical parts of the same whole. This not only makes Adam real and dimensional but keeps the characters around him from seeming foolish and it makes sense that they believe Adam has hidden qualities that are brought out by others.

As we watch Lucy and Adam get closer to one another it's hard not to notice that Adam also strikes a chord with Laura while on the surface he appears to be a straight laced but somewhat nondescript kind of guy she is quickly amazed when he begins to recite her favorite poems back to her. As the film backtracks on its initial set of events and expands on Adam's involvement with the Owens family we start to discover that Adam and Laura may also have something going a chance meeting in a bookstore turns into a tryst that awakens Laura to the love she's always dreamed about from reading her favorite literature over and over. Even more layers of the onion are pened back to reveal Adam's impact on David's life, he somehow gets the teen's sexually cautious girlfriend to open up as well as his ongoing proposition towards Alice whose open dissatisfaction with her dull husband practically begs to be picked up upon by the sensitive Adam. I like to give people what they want thinks Adam.

It is constantly surprising to me to have Adam's reckless behavior sprung on us like a joke and it's often difficult to believe that Adam would have the mental and physical stamina to meet everyone's needs in such a manner and yet the character is never a gigolo. Though he's cheating on Lucy to open up the eyes and lives of her sisters an act often impossible to be rationally justified on film because it is often conveyed visually rather than intellectually.

Director Stembridge's really did a well constructed script. The acting is really very good. While Kate Hudson gives a very fine performance that one would expect from her the real surprise is Ms. O'Conner who gives a genuine performance. She's in fact the star of this movie I think and when she is center stage she can steal the show. Rosaleen Linehan as Lucy's mom isn't given enough to do I don't think but she is also fun to watch. And what drives Stembridge as well is he loves his characters and turns their encounters into a whole new twist on sexual healing. That sheer romantic innocence makes About Adam a sweet and infectious movie.

Enjoy!

I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes a great romantic comedy movie. Click here to purchase the movie and give it a try.

Edition Details:

• Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen