Wow. We knew that early word on this was good, but we didn’t know it was this good. Focus Features has set the Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess led rom-com “One Day” with a scheduled July 8th release date, placing it right in the middle of the summer blockbuster season. The move will put the film, opening in a platform release, up against the Kevin James family vehicle “The Zookeeper” and more intriguingly, opposite the next and presumably terrible Katherine Heigl film, “One For The Money.” We know what we’re buying our tickets for that weekend.
Based on the book by David Nicholls, who co-wrote the script, “One Day” tells the story of a couple—Dexter (Sturgess), a spoiled rich TV host and Emma (Hathaway), a politically minded, insecure, working class Yorkshire girl—who meet on the same day, July 15th, for the twenty years after they share a one-night stand together at university. Rafe Spall co-stars in the pic as the partner of Emma, Romola Garai as Dexter’s partner and Patricia Clarkson possibly as the mother of Dexter.
The film is, of course, Lone Scherfig’s highly anticipated follow up to the successful Carey Mulligan breakout film, “An Education.” The director showed a remarkable talent for tone and a subtlety of hand that we think will make “One Day” a cut above the standard rom-com cloth and it certainly makes the summer moviegoing season — particularly that weekend — a little brighter. So who’s it gonna be: Heigl or Hathaway? We think the choice is obvious.