Last Chance Harvey

Nothing quite chills like the prospect of a May-December romance. Erm. Didn’t we decide these movies weren’t all that PC around the time Cary Grant retired from the biz?
Still, you can’t argue with quality players like Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. So here’s the deal; he’s a crumpled jingle-writer who long ago abandoned hope of a career as a jazz musician. She’s a statistics jockey working in Heathrow airport. They meet. They share One Magical Evening. He gets the girl then loses the girl. You can probably guess the rest.
This gentle comedy, a sort of Before Sunrise for folks who are old enough to remember the moon landing, works in a bittersweet narrative about Mr. Hoffman’s estranged daughter without imploding into a cutsey-pie mess. Our disaffected leads, despite their years, are beautiful losers and as such, their romance is right out of high Gen-X era Douglas Coupland.
It hardly needs to be said that this is an Actor’s Movie, not just for Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Thompson but also for such lively supporting players as Eileen Atkins and Bronagh Gallagher. Happily, all these good people pull together and ensure that Joel Hopkin’s old-school picture is sweet with none of the saccharin aftertaste.