I wanted to like this movie. I like romantic comedies. And anything with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen must have something to offer. But I came away from this movie with my face all curled up, not in a good way.
Jack and Sarah is a movie about a carefree young lawyer named Jack who has a lovely, level-headed wife named Sarah. She's pregnant with their first child; they're moving into their first house, and everything seems like things can't get better. But when Sarah announces she's in labor, Jack panics and injures himself and wakes up in the hospital to discover that Sarah has had the baby (also, later, named Sarah) -- and died (from some undisclosed complication; we're never told.) He leaves his daughter and goes on a bender. He is joined by his homeless friend William (McKellen, in a wasted--pardon the pun--role). He's well on his way to being a lifetime drunk when his well-meaning parents and mother-in- law sneak in and put his baby into the bed with him and then refuse to help him. Suddenly Jack is a model of sobriety and loving fatherhood. He has to go back to work, so he takes the baby along, but that doesn't work...he interviews nannies but no one's good enough for his daughter.
Enter Amy, an American waitress working in a café where Jack chances to dine. Coincidence brings them together and he offers her the job of nanny--although she doesn't even know how to change a diaper, she's more qualified than the professional nannies.
Ever watch a romantic comedy and find that you can't root for the couple to get together? I end up doing it now and then; I don't want to, but when you're shown two people who have nothing in common except adoring the baby, it's just difficult to see the attraction.
But that's the whole problem with the movie: there's very little character development. Amy gets none. We have no idea why she's even in England. She's not much good at her job, whether it's waitressing or doing laundry. We don't know what kind of music, books, or movies she likes, or anything about her except that her boyfriend left her for someone else, and that she has a friend she occasionally hangs out with. She loves little Sarah, but heck, the baby or babies portraying her are so adorable that you'd have to be a lizard-like space alien not to, so it's not a real accomplishment.
There's a lot of Jack going through his grief and mending his relationship with his father, but that's about it. I don't know, beyond little Sarah, what it is that draws Jack and Amy together, nor do I much care.
The film is very disjointed, leaving me to think it was planned as a longer story and a lot of the (best?) scenes probably ended up being cut for time. Ian McKellen serves no purpose in the movie that I can see--and that's a shame, because he could have and should have been interesting. We see him as a lovable drunk, then at some point Jack apparently adopts/hires him as sort of a butler, and he of course tells Jack he's a dummy during the "boy loses girl" segment, but even that serves no purpose because everyone else tells him that too. (And I keep wondering why, because Amy's not an interesting person...) His major role seems to be in the surprise ending, and while that's certainly an eye-opener
SPOILER ALERT---------
he marries "Phil" (the mother of Jack's wife Sarah), even that's one that doesn't really make sense. It may make you laugh or cry, but if you think about it for longer than 30 seconds, you'll stop laughing and start going "but why?"
The person given the best treatment, I thought, was (Jack's wife) Sarah's mother "Phil," played by Eileen Atkins. She's good in every scene she's in, a loyal friend, a loving mother figure, and understanding when it's most needed. Of course that also serves to make you ask why, then, did she push Amy and Jack together, and why did she marry the sweet drunk?
There's even a character I was sure was supposed to be important ...her name was Pamela, and I'm not sure whether she was Jack's or Sarah's much-younger sister. Early on, it seemed as if she'd have something to do, but she abruptly disappeared after a few minutes and didn't show up again until the ending.
I know the movie title is "Jack and Sarah," not "Jack and Amy." And I get that in addition to a romantic comedy it's also supposed to be about Jack learning to be a parent. But even that's messed up, as Amy points out when she leaves him, since he's still irresponsible. Sure, he loves Sarah when he's around her, but he's not often around her--he's sloughing her off on nannies and grandparents so he can continue to work and go to bars and go on dates. I suppose the movie title could even be inferred to be about Jack's relationship with his wife Sarah, since he really loved her. But then he seems to get over her death remarkably fast, too, going out on dates with "Anna" his office boss and by his own admission trying to get laid. So physical need transcends grief. Okay, whatever...?
Maybe this is secretly one of those "existentialist" movies that people occasionally toss out there to make us question our existence, and what people see in each other that draws them to another person. Of course it offers nothing in the way of answers, but it's certainly confusing enough to make you ask a lot of questions.
