Judging by the advertising, you might think Nicole Kidman’s latest film is an action and suspense thriller. Well, after actually watching Birthday Girl you would come to a completely different conclusion. The film that also stars Ben Chaplin (Lost Souls) is more of a twisted romantic comedy between the two stars. Now there is some suspense, but it only last for about ten minutes. But the comedy portion that went unadvertised isn’t half-bad.

As to the story, Chaplin plays bank clerk John Buckingham. He lives a rather boring life in a little city about 60 miles outside of London. He is a hard worker that gets middle of the road performance reviews, but never moved up in the company during the ten years he spent there as a clerk. He is also lonely, so through the power of the Internet he orders himself a Russian bride. This is where the sexy Kidman (The Others, Moulin Rouge!) enters the picture as the Russian bride to be named Nadia. Slowly, and mainly through kinky sex, John cums (oops, comes) to like and even love Nadia. Then on her “birthday” an old friend and his acquaintance come unannounced to visit. Both of these guys, Alexei (Vincent Cassel) and Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz), are Russians as well. Only Yuri can speak good English though. Well the two of them overstay their welcome and John kicks them out one night, but they can stay till morning. In the morning Alexei goes ballistic and threatens to kill Nadia if John doesn’t get him a lot of cash from the bank. So John goes to his bank where he works and calmly removes 90,000 £ (roughly $128,700 at current exchange rates) from the safe and delivers it to the hostage taker. Here is where we discover that Nadia is really Sophia, she speaks English, she is part of an international scheme used on many Western men, Alexei is Sophia’s boyfriend, and finally Sophia is pregnant with Alexei’s kid. This is also the point where the movie gets predictable, but funny.

The few other actors and actresses in this Jez Butterworth directed film are Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Stephen Mangan, Ben Miller, and Alexander Armstrong. Butterworth also did some of the writing with his brother Tom.

Since the film is not what you expect, and it gets very predictable at the end, you know it can’t get a great review (unless there is a payoff involved). Nonetheless, it is actually quite a funny movie that is entertaining once John and Sophia interact after freeing themselves. This humor is the one saving grace of Birthday Girl, since I can’t count getting to see Kidman in nothing but wet underwear. To wrap it up, the film receives five couches out of a possible ten.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:48:20 AM

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