Hopkins: The Love Punch (2013)

Separation and remarriage have become so integral to romantic comedy that it’s quite refreshing to see a comedy of remarriage that’s as retro and screwy as The Love Punch. As Richard and Kate Jones, Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson play a pair of wacky, ultra-compatible divorcees who make up their minds to crash the wedding of the French businessman responsible for draining their pension fund, and restore their life savings with his fiancee’s ten billion dollar diamond necklace. Of course, it’s their own wedding and remarriage they’re moving towards, as they ship their friends Penelope (Celia Imrie) and Jerry (Timothy Spall) to the South of France, where they commence their heist by impersonating a foursome of wealthy Texan businessman, after realising that bursting into the CEO’s office to scold him into returning their money isn’t going to work. As might be expected, the heist itself is suffused with the same kind of offbeat oblivion, the slight unworldliness of parents beyond a certain age, as Richard and Kate outsource all the technical details of the heist to their son over a series of tortuous skype conversations, and fantasize about giving their nemesis a piece of their mind even more than they fantasize about ripping him off. At the same time, though, it all feels quite continuous with Brosnan’s more high-profile heist films as well, which always had a comic, parodic edge that’s simply a little more accentuated here, without ever detracting from the details and procedure of the heist itself, which are lovingly detailed and elaborated as in any of Brosnan’s previous outings. At moments, it’s almost a bit like witnessing the Bond Brosnan might have been if he’d chosen to model himself on Roger Moore rather than Sean Connery, bringing a bit more of his typical wryness into his somewhat atypical Bondness, and transforming Emma Thompson in turn into the great Bond girl who never was. In both cases, that gives the actors license to have fun, license to rediscover the pleasures of acting and interacting afresh before your very eyes in the manner so peculiar to screwball comedy, which in turn creates a charming, low-key intimacy that often recalls the artlessness of their earliest television outings - Remington Steele meets Alfresco – when they were as totally unencumbered by posterity and prestige as they appear to be here.