Film Review: I Love You Too

I Love You Too. 107 minutes. Rated M. Directed by Daina Reid. Written by Peter Helliar

Television and film are vastly different mediums, and when writers, directors and actors attempt to cross over from careers in one to careers in the other, the results can be disastrous. George Clooney (who, perhaps not ironically, is mentioned in I Love You Too) did it – gaining international fame in ER before going on to build an impressive CV in the film business. But for every George Clooney there's a cast of Friends, an almost impossibly successful sit-com, whose attempts at respectable film careers has, more often than not, resulted in an embarrassing poverty of ability and talent.

Jim (Brendan Cowell) is having trouble telling his gorgeous, well-adjusted and devoted girlfriend Alice (Yvonne Strahovski) that he loves her. The death of his parents in a car accident has stunted his emotional development and he works, rather endearingly, as a driver of the "largest miniature steam train in the southern hemisphere" – a tourist attraction that his father owned. He still lives in the bungalow out the back of the family home, which is now occupied by his pregnant sister (Bridie Carter) and her booze-loving partner (Travis McMahon). Finding himself newly-single, Jim meets the grieving widower Charlie (Peter Dinklage), and the two new friends set out to help each other reach new heights of romantic and emotional maturity.

There is a great deal to like and enjoy about comedian Helliar's debut screenplay and Daina Reid's (City Homicide, All Saints) assured, if unadventurous, handling of it. The performances are all well-grounded and every character gets their moment in the spotlight. Ultimately, however, the art of film is all about story, character and photography. With much of the action taking place either indoors or at night, I Love You Too ends up being all too one-dimensional and under-lit – one of the many ways in which it ends up resembling an expensive episode of Love Something Or Other as opposed to the fully-fledged feature film it is trying so hard to be.

As far as the story is concerned, there's an over-riding sense of clutter – a result of the script trying to tell us too much. The collision between Jim and Charlie, while feeling incredibly contrived, relievedly takes us away from the seen-it-all-before "you're my best mate" rubbish that suffocates the film's early scenes and threatens to collapse our interest and engagement within minutes. In the end, though, it all comes down to balance of character and story, and while Cowell works hard in the leading role, it is Dinklage (Death at a Funeral, The Chronicles of Narnia: Price Caspian) who walks away with the film in every scene he appears in. His vast experience and skill in front of the camera occasionally leaves his less-experienced and more television-drilled co-stars struggling to match the pace. The really positive thing about that, though, is that it is Helliar's script that gives him that opportunity – and with the services of an expert script editor, Helliar has a really exciting future as a script writer ahead of him. For an Australian film industry starved of even half-decent scripts, that's the best news imaginable.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.