One Chance
Director: David Frankel
Actors: Colm Meaney, Julie Walters, Jemima Rooper
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Biopic, Comedy
Running time: 109 minutes
So this film exists. And it exists for two reasons: either writer Justin Zackham and director David Frankel were so taken with the Britain’s Got Talent winner’s heart-warming story they felt that an audience would feel inspired by it, or it’s just a cynical outing for all concerned to snag some bored X Factor/Britain’s Got Talent fans who have nothing else to do in the afternoon. It’s probably the latter but because One Chance is so nice - and it’s really nice - I sincerely hope it’s the former.
Corden plays Paul Potts, the 2007 Britain’s Got Talent winner that wowed audiences with his rendition of Nessun Dorma. But that’s later - we first meet him as a kid escaping bullies in a Welsh seaside town where his father (Meaney) works at the local slagheap. Growing up to work in a Carphone Warehouse, Paul’s love of opera rubs his father up the wrong way, but delights Julie-Ann (Roach) whom he meets on an internet chatroom, and who is behind his dream to attend an opera school in Venice…
If you want to keep a movie light and breezy Zackham (The Bucket List, The Big Wedding) would be the man to write it and Frankel (Marley And Me, The Devil Wears Prada) would be the best director to bring it to the screen. The movie has no depth beyond the ‘heart-breaking’ stories behind the contestants on Britain’s Got Talent, which is the real basis of the show’s voting. It can be story-by-numbers with Meaney the disapproving dad, Walters the doting mum who says embarrassing things at the dinner table, the bully who gets so incensed at Pauls’ talent, and the feisty Italian grandmother who serves up a plate of pasta right next to a Venetian canal. Thankfully the Cambodian dictator joke is gotten out of the way early so we’re not distracted by waiting for its imminent arrival.
But damn it it’s likeable. If Corden is deemed too laddish to play the shy Potts the good news is that he tones all that down here and the romance with Alexandra Roach, which takes up as much of the running time as Paul’s singing ambition, is cute enough to work.
