Lifestyle

LADY GODIVA RIDES AGAIN

REVIEW: 22 YEAR OLD VICKY JEWSON’S TIPPED FOR SUCCESS FILM

Where to start? What should have been a quirky, engaging adaptation of the legendary tale of Lady Godiva who rode naked on horseback through the streets of Coventry, in order to fulfil a wager set against her by an oppressive lord, is turned into a bitty, clichéd, and altogether rather disappointing film.

The archetypal situation in which boy meets girl, they fall in love, something comes in between them, but finally they are reconciled and live happily ever after, forms the basis of the story. However, whilst we usually embrace this over-used screenplay, Lady Godiva leaves you thinking ‘so what?’ The seemingly likeable female lead, Holby City’s Phoebe Thomas, is rather one dimensional as Jemima Honey, an art teacher in a snobby private school who dreams of rebuilding the Art Factory, an education centre. Matthew Chambers plays the hunky male support, a local horse-breeder (with an equestrian obsession that is utterly ridiculous) who has written a book about the Godiva legend. Jemima dismisses him as a playboy, but their paths keep crossing.

With his support, Jemima starts to believe that re-building the Art Factory is actually possible. However the course of true love never did run smooth and, after a fight, Michael bets a reporter £100,000 that she won’t ride naked through the city. Determined to get back at him, Jemima accepts. Supposedly ‘a comedy in the vein of Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’, writer and director Vicky Jewson sadly fails to deliver the same standard of British film making. The whole story, as the protagonist’s name, Honey, would suggest, is sickly sweet, and its cheese-filled soundtrack of McFly and Enrique Iglesias, certainly doesn’t help matters. Instead of Lady Godiva ‘being born again’, perhaps she should have been laid to rest!

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