Last Chance Harvey Review

Last Chance Harvey finds Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson on top form as veteran losers in love who decide to seize the day before arthritis sets in. It's the years of baggage they bring while on a day out in London that lifts the film above so many other romantic comedies, which are frequently the reserve of the vacuous, the wide-eyed and the wrinkle-free.

So much bitter disappointment, all of it written of their faces, has left Harvey (Dustin Hoffman) and Kate (Emma Thompson) lagging behind in the race to find love, and that makes the quest all the more urgent. What makes it surprising, despite a familiar plot, is the fact that these two show a greater level of faith and optimism in life than those neurotic twentysomethings who apart from watching too many watered-down Woody Allen rip-offs, bear no emotional scars.

Harvey has taken many hard knocks, the latest being the threat of getting fired from his job writing the music for advertising jingles. He has that subdued sweaty aura of Jack Lemmon (in, say, The Apartment ) when he assures his boss that he'll only need a day off to fly from New York to London to attend his daughter's wedding and be back fresh on Monday morning to land that proverbial big contract. His focus is so narrow that he barely notices Kate when she approaches him at Heathrow wanting a moment of his time to participate in a survey. She takes the brush-off like so many others with a polite smile and dignified acceptance, though Thompson plays it with a moving undercurrent of resignation.