Recensioni di Metacritic

A smart, winning and comic, if at times bittersweet, treat.

It's not a stretch to say the movie works in large part because of the charm and sparkle of the three leads: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, and Kristin Scott Thomas.

You can have a reasonably nice time at Salmon Fishing in the Yemen if you accept that it's the tidiest movie imaginable to ever say that falling in love is like swimming upstream.

The film has a grand cast, with Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas and Amr Waked at the center of this very clever tale of modern eco-issues intertwined with old-style political intrigues and New Age romance.

This perhaps sounds like a hilarious movie. So it could be, in the hands of the masters of classic British comedy. Unfortunately, the director is the Swede Lasse ("Chocolat"), who sees it as a heart-warming romance and doesn't take advantage of the rich eccentricity in the story.

Alas, none of it, save Kristin Scott Thomas giving a peach of a performance as a political operative, smacks of real life or vitality. Even when it evinces spasms of life, this film is, more or less, a dead fish.

The movie has a hard time wrapping up its love story without feeling forced, however game the cast. Viewers won't be able to say they weren't given what they came for, but they might feel unsatisfied all the same.

Like one of those kitchen machines that can turn nearly any ingredient into ice cream, Lasse Hallstrom has sweetened the satire right out of Paul Torday's side-splitting political sendup Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

Mostly sacrifices the political satire and epistolary structure of Paul Torday's source novel in favor of cute, if strained, rom-com shenanigans.

Only Kristin Scott Thomas channeling "In the Loop's" Malcolm Tucker offers a spark; the rest is simply hokum designed to land overly sentimental suckers hook, line and sinker.