#2014: #29

#29 What If

At age 17, Daniel Radcliffe made worldwide news when he starred in the West End revival of Equus, a play about a psychiatrist treating a young man who has a fascination with horses. The controversy surrounding the play had mostly to do with a nude scene performed by Radcliffe and the fact that he was allegedly hung like a...well, you know.

This was during Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix's campaign, and life after Potter's end in 2011 hasn't been nearly as headline-grabbing. He has starred in two horror films--The Woman in Black and Horns, about, I shite you not, a young man waking up after his girlfriend's death to find horns growing from his temples--and as a young Allan Ginsburg in the indie drama Kill Your Darlings. No, he hasn't been taking star turns in Perks of a Wallflower and The Bling Ring or solving gender equality like his co-star Emma Watson. He's been easing into things, which is understandable if you're the most recognizable Brit who doesn't reside in Buckingham. Hey, at least he can do this.

And he's not so bad as a romantic lead, either. He plays Wallace, a young Seattle-ite who has had a fair share of lousy relationship endings. At a party with his buddy Allan (Adam Driver again!), he is moping near the refrigerator magnets and creating existential sentences when up comes Chantry (Ruby Sparks' Zoe Kazan) to do some word whimsy with him. They hit it off, he walks her home, she has a boyfriend (Rafe Spall). She gives him her number anyway, and they begin hanging out as just f-words (The original title of this movie was The F-Word). When the boyfriend moves to Dublin for a job with United Nations and Chantry gets offered a promotion in Taiwan, Wallace scrambles to try and find a way to tell her he likes her more than f-words before it's too late. There is plenty of formula at play, down to the Wedding Singer subplot of the guy turning down sex with the sister. Nonetheless, the leads have good chemistry, the supporting cast is better than passable, and the movie  provides an opportunity for Mr. Radcliffe shed the scar with pretty positive, entertaining results.