The conceit of Man Up - a woman accidentally hijacks a blind date - is novel enough to provide an above-average rom-com, but what really makes the Brit comedy work is having the characters who inhabit the story long-in-the-tooth thirty-somethings. Here companionship isn't built around idealistic notions of romance, but treated as a way to escape the scary spectre of loneliness. It's so refreshing to see a film that will embrace these elements, and while it does still ascribe to "get a man, fix all your problems" school of thought, this one does it with heart and humour. It's not going to change cinema, but it's an above average night at the cinema that's pretty uplifting when all's said and done. And yet the whole thing seems to have been sorely overlooked, probably just by it being a genre film and thus rubbing people up the wrong way. A rom-com is a rom-com is a rom-com and, age of its cast aside, this does follow the tropes. It also stars Simon Pegg, which usually isn't as good a thing as it sounds; he may be beloved in geek circles, but once he steps into mainstream comedy the results are often insipid (anybody else still haunted by Run Fatboy Run?), so expectations for this will have been rather low.
