Solitaire For 2.

Evie Arup

Here's another British romantic comedy hoping to strike a chord somewhere, (preferably America) and bring the punters flooding in as they did for Four Weddings and a funeral.

But from the outset it's obvious that this is not to be the case, although in no way can the lead actors Mark Frankel and Amanda Pays be held responsible for the movie's shortcomings for they are both fine young actors and deserve a break. In fact, has they replaced Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell in the aforementioned Four Weddings, I'm convinced the film would have done just as well.

The jokes in Solitaire For 2 must have looked a lot funnier on the page - on screen they fall flat, which is surprising because the film was scripted by Sinyor himself and he was responsible for the hugely funny Lean The Pig Farmer.

Mark Frankel (he was also in The Pig Farmer) plays smooth, womanising yuppie management consultant Daniel Becker, who runs courses on body language and how to use it effectively. He's the kind of guy who spends much of his time perfecting his body language technique in front of a full length mirror.

Amanda Pays is the mindreading (she's blessed with the gift of ESP) paleontologist Katie Burrell.

Predictably he falls for her in a big way, and equally predictably, she gives him the bum's rush because she can read what's going on in his filthy little mind. But you know they're going to get together anyway despite the size of their respective egos.

Verdict? If you must see it, wait for the video.

Features

Film check; Listings
George Perry

SOLITAIRE FOR 2
106 mins, 15

Gary Sinyor's new film, which he also co-produced and wrote, is a mild attempt at British screwball romantic comedy. Amanda Pays plays Katie, a dinosaur expert and, although her lecturing technique is yawn-inducing, she attracts Daniel, who has made a mint teaching the secrets of body language. On every chance encounter she slugs him hard. When finally they introduce themselves, she explains that it is because she can read men's minds. Alas, Mark Frankel is no Cary Grant and is unable to show why somebody with his blokish taste in cars and women should be bowled over by a Laura Ashley-clad academic. She would probably be better off with her Indian colleague (Roshan Seth), whose mind she cannot read because he thinks in Hindi.

ARTS-UNLUCKY in love
HUGO DAVENPORT

SOLITAIRE FOR 2
(15 cert, 107 mins)
general release

Gary Sinyor jointly wrote, produced and directed the offbeat British comedy, Leon the Pig Farmer, with Vadim Jean. Their subsequent solo careers make you wonder how they worked together. Chalk and cheese isn't in it, for Jean has since directed the manic, exploitative Beyond Bedlam, while Sinyor continued wearing the same three hats to make Solitaire for 2, another oddball comedy.

The film has an ingenious, Cartesian premise-a manipulative male, who teaches body language to corporate executives, falls in love with a woman palaeontologist able to read his mind through ESP. Unfortunately, it is also flawed in its execution-partly because it does not follow its own skewed logic right down the line, and partly because it is much too slow.

Sinyor casts Mark Frankel, the lead actor from Leon the Pig Farmer, as Daniel Becker, the behaviourist with a commitment problem, who is first seen dumping a girlfriend by staring moodily out of the window to the accompaniment of Mozart's Requiem.

He is soon pursuing a new woman, Katie Burrill (Amanda Pays), inexplicably attracted by her tendency to sock him in the jaw.

She is free with her fist, it transpires, because her telepathic talents allow her to divine immediately that, like most men, he has "a mind like a sewer". Despite disastrous dates and a hovering rival (Roshan Seth), Daniel persists, wooing her with flowers, champagne, Italian meals, and-worst of all-a personal performance by Right Said Fred in South Kensington's Natural History Museum to celebrate a marriage proposal she hasn't yet accepted.

The problem here is not so much that neither character is especially likeable: they simply have nothing in common. Katie places intellect above feelings-true, it's a refreshing change to see a heroine so aggressively resistant to the corny strategies of conventional romance-whereas Daniel, aside from his cunning, hasn't an original idea in his head. He's a yuppie moron, really.

What's more, Katie's telepathy is both omniscient and selective. She does not perceive, for instance, that a note on his fridge door is just another game to get the upper hand.

Other characters behave implausibly, like the friend (Jason Isaacs) who throws Daniel out when Katie informs them of Daniel's dream about the friend's wife (Maryam D'Abo).

Too knowing for romance, too long to sustain its own slightness, the film becomes a mangled mosaic of patchy comic moments.

Critic's Choice: CINEMA
HUGO DAVENPORT

***Outstanding *Good !!! Stinker

Solitaire for 2
Following up his success as co-creator of the offbeat British comedy, Leon the Pig Farmer, was never going to be easy for Gary Sinyor. His second film, which he wrote, directed and co-produced, is a patchy romantic comedy with a clever set-up-behaviourist falls for telepath-but a slack pace and unsympathetic characters. With Mark Frankel, Amanda Pays.

Features

Sympathy for the Devilish;Cinema
Geoff Brown

After the space opera of Star Trek, Solitaire for 2 brings us crashing down to earth: London traffic wardens, bookshops, restaurants. The National History Museum. A Hampstead front garden. This is the background to the new film by Gary Sinyor, one of the team responsible for Leon the Pig Farmer. His colleague Vadim Jean has since veered off into explicit horror with Beyond Bedlam. Sinyor, however, has stayed with humour, and fashioned an eccentric romantic comedy that works only in fits and starts.

The problem starts with the awkward basic idea. Daniel, the hero, is a lecturer in body language, used to applying his skills at manipulation and behavioural science to bed woman. Heroine Katie is an archaeologist, unlucky in love and blessed, or cursed with extra-sensory perception: give her a Tube carriage or a passing waiter and she can read every thought.

As in Hollywood's vintage screwball comedies, the pair's fractious first meeting eventually blossoms into love, although Sinyor's script lacks the sparkling dialogue that would kick the genre back to life.

His cast comes up short. Amanda Pays, brittle, defensive, forever completing others' sentences is acceptable enough as the woman most at ease discussing old bones. But Mark Frankel, the hero of Leon the Pig Farmer, dispenses his charm so heavy-handedly that his presence becomes wearing.

Sinyor deserves credit for mounting his film smoothly and reviving an attractive genre; but this is clearly a project that needed more time on the drawing board.

The Arts: 'Solitaire for 2'

In Solitaire for 2 (15), Amanda Pays plays an archaeologist with ESP who goes around hitting men because they're thinking dirty thoughts about her. Mark Frankel plays a flash geezer who is an expert in body language. Boy meets girl, boy chases girl, girl hits boy, and so on.

Gary Sinyor, of Leon the Pig Farmer fame, wrote, co-produced and directed. It's a brave attempt, but romantic comedy is the hardest of all genres to pull off (which is why Four Weddings and a Funeral was such a miracle) and this doesn't quite make it. The pace is more sloppy than snappy, the characters are unconvincing, and the London locations don't fit together. And I really don't think Hampstead Heath at night, is the place for a romantic stroll, do you?