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Zone's Eye View of "Birthday Girl" |
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Synopsis of movie: Internet love connections and mail-order brides rarely ever work out, and John (played by Ben Chaplin) should have known. Having never been lucky in the game of love and tired of waiting for the perfect woman to come along, John decides to take his chances and orders a mail-order bride from Russia online. At first, things seem perfect: his new bride Nadia (Nicole Kidman) is a gorgeous woman, and although she may not speak much English, her skills in the bedroom more than make up for any communication problems. When Nadia's 'cousins' unexpectedly arrive to celebrate her birthday, John is drawn into their web of corruption and crime. Now for The Zone's Eye View By Laura Alber Aside from seeing Nicole Kidman seemingly getting better with every performance, “Birthday Girl” doesn’t have much more than that to offer. It’s almost as though we’re watching Kidman explore every possible type of character she can, and we’re tagging along for the ride. There’s no denying Nicole Kidman has commanded respect on the screen and deserving of every bit of it, unfortunately we have a rather dull and anti-climactic film revolving around this particular performance. Kidman shines despite the film, as a Russian mail order bride (Nadia) to Ben Chaplin (John Buckingham). Ben is a very ordinary guy, working in the same bank for 10 years and too quiet and appeasing to demand a promotion. He lives in a modest home and is obviously very lonely as he searches the Internet for his future wife. Ben thinks Nadia is too good to be true when he spots her at the airport, until that is; he realizes she doesn’t speak English. Adamantly trying to contact the service he went through to “return” her, she wins him over in a way that no man could resist. She becomes Ben’s fantasy girl and sex toy. He soon gives up the idea of sending her back and they seem to be finding ways of communicating without the luxury of words. The naïve Ben realizes his new life is on the verge of difficulties when two Russian’s show up at his house on Nadia’s Birthday. One of them speaks English and translates to Ben that he is an old friend of Natalie’s and his friend is someone he hooked up with along the way. The three Russian’s seem to be full of life and want to play and party all the time, while Ben is getting more and more uncomfortable with their presence. He doesn’t want to ask them to leave, since they were friends of his fiancé, but he obviously wants them out of their lives. The “fun” finally ends when Yuri and Alexei (Matthieu Kassovitz, Vincent Cassel) terrorize Ben into robbing his own bank for them. Frantic, frightened and naïve, Ben does what he’s told and is now forced to be on the run. A few plot twists, all expected in this very predictable film, and that’s pretty much it. Birthday Girl was billed as a Romance/Thriller, but is lacking in both. The “romance” is nothing more than Kidman playing out Ben’s strange fantasy’s for him, and his total obsession with her, as for the “thriller” part, well, unfortunately it was too predictable to give us any “thrills” or “chills”. If you are a Nicole Kidman fan, by all means, see the film. If you’re thinking of seeing a “thriller”, I’d suggest you look elsewhere. The Zone rates Birthday Girl a 3 out of 10.
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