**NO SPOILERS!**

Given the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral it’s brave for any director to take on yet another movie about a wedding but Dan Mazer (writer of Borat) took on the challenge as script writer and director (his first movie!) and won!

Remember Auf Wiedersehen, Pet? That television show about builders working in German in the ’80s. There was a character called Barry played by a young actor called Timothy Spall. Back then I didn’t really like the programme but did see it’s humour and I thought Spall was an awful actor. Now, thirty years later, I think he’s one of the greatest actors of my generation. He’s brilliant in any role he takes. I’m straying from the point again! Anyhoo, he had a son who he called Raef and he is the lead male in I Give It A Year. The acting gene seems to have been passed on from father to son as he plays the role of Josh wonderfully.

Opposite him is Rose Byrne playing his wife Nat. Now I’ll be honest, I’ve never really been a big fan of hers. Her acting seems to go up and down in each role and it bugs me a little. X-men: Blah! Bridesmaid: Brill! 28 Weeks Later: Blah! Knowing: Brill! See? (By the way – Just because I liked her in Knowing doesn’t mean it was a good film!) In IGIAY she is great. She plays her part really well and her and Spall just seem to work together brilliantly.

Josh and Nat are a couple who, obviously from the start, were never really matched. He’s a writer, with one successful book under his belt, who sits at home trying to produce his second. She’s a high-flying PR executive who knows her business well. Within the first few minutes of the film you can see they’re not meant to be together but thrown into the mix of an already unstable relationship is Stephen Merchant as a cringe-worthy best man and Minnie Driver as Nat’s older husband-hating sister. Watching Merchant you’ll grimace as you suddenly realise he’s that friend! The one everyone has, that they’ll say “Oh he’s got a heart of gold, a really nice guy, he doesn’t mean any harm!” but will try not to socialise with him too much. His one liners added to his facial expressions give him worthy laughs.

As Nat is the straight-laced one in the relationship and Josh is the loveable clown it’s he that gets most of the laughs in the film, and deservedly so during the game of charades and digital picture frame debacle. If we’re counting moments of hysteria he’s not that far in front of a few of the other characters. Minnie Driver’s caustic comments about her husband will have you giggling away, the Baker/Byrne Dove Incident will have you laughing and Anna Faris’ bedroom scene will have you creased. It’s scene stealing Olivia Coleman though that will really have you roaring. The phone call to her husband is going to be how I imagine every marriage guidance counsellor behaves from now on.

The question of will they or won’t they stay together is left wide open until the very end of the film and you could spend your entire time guessing which way it’s going to go. Just when you think you’ve worked it out something changes and you’re left trying to think out the plot again. Don’t bother, just go with it.

Mazer has done a wonderful job with the script and gives the characters some great lines and everything just seems to sit well with this film. Added to that script is his directing which is brilliant. Being a first time film director can a daunting task, even if you a couple of tv shows under your belt, but Mazer took this on and has given us a wonderful piece of work. It’s certainly a “must-see!”

I Give It A Year – It give it an eight!