I wanted to but couldn't!

Expected more

Brilliant and touching

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A romantic drama / occasional comedy about a couple returning to Paris to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Disappointment, disillusionment, discontent from Meg about her marriage and essentially her life. During the course of the weekend they both learn to live more honestly and freely, helping Meg realise that she can perhaps live the life she craves with her husband of 30 years ...

My apologies to everyone who rated it highly; maybe I just missed the point. But I really, really did not enjoy this movie. I found the characters completely unlikeable, the situations frustrating and the ending totally ridiculous. I have never disliked Jim Broadbent in anything, until now. The "sniff" scene was especially revolting. The various "skipping-out" scenarios where the couple owed money to a restaurant or the hotel didn't make sense… maybe they would have if the shared experience had changed the characters or made them grow in some way, preferably towards one another, but nothing changed. They were the same miserable so-and-sos at the end that they were in the beginning, still ball-and-chained together. It would have been preferable for them to realize that they wanted to split up and gone their separate ways; that at least would have made sense.I'm sure the endless scenes filmed on staircases were supposed to be symbolic of something, but I haven't taken the trouble to try and figure out what. By the time they got to Goldblum's place and were trudging up the stairs with the elevator passing them on its way up, my only thought was how bloody stupid can you be, marching up endless stairs when there's a perfectly good elevator right there? The woman had to have had party shoes on; there's no way a sane woman in high heels goes for five or six flights of stairs if she has any choice in the matter. Unless she's a masochist. Hey, wait… maybe I just figured out the plot.Was there anything I did like? Sure. I liked that balcony in their hotel room that overlooked the Eiffel Tower, and I liked the teenage son of Jeff Goldblum's character, who seemed to be the only person around who had any idea what was going on. That's it.

Nick and Meg are a British couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary with a weekend getaway in Paris. As they travel around the city, they revisit the highs and lows of their relationship, fight about their faults, and continue to run out of restaurants without paying the bill. They meet up with an old colleague of Nick's and attend a dinner party at his house, leading to some painful truths being spoken aloud......Imagine films like Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, or Up The Junction, and take the characters from those films, forward it thirty years, and you have Nick and Meg. Its a kitchen sink drama, but in the middle class, and this is the films point of interest.Broadbent and Duncan are effortless as the twenty something's trapped in their ageing bodies, and sometimes it's really heart wrenching when Meg is being Abhorrent toward Nick and their relationship.But the relationship is just so real. Its as if you are watching an actual married couple on screen, and just when you think things are looking up for the couple, we have Jeff Goldblum appearing as an old colleague of Nicks, sparking something up again.Its a wonderful little film, with some great performances, and the scene at the dinner table is both heart warming, and crushing.

We saw this on DVD, the extra is interesting as the writer and director (who also directed Notting Hill) had the idea for the story then went and spent a weekend in Paris to see what couples might do, to make the story seem more real. And that is a strong point of the movie, it seems very real.The couple are Lindsay Duncan as Meg and Jim Broadbent as Nick. They have been married for 30 years and it seems their relationship has gotten a bit stale. So maybe a romantic weekend in Paris will rejuvenate things. But not so fast, there are some things boiling under the surface with both of them, making it a quite challenging weekend.A pleasant surprise is Jeff Goldblum. I always enjoy his characters, he has a way about acting that takes a plain role and makes it more interesting than it has a right to be. Here he is Morgan, an old friend of Nick's from college. Morgan seems very well off, and very cheerful with his pretty, young, and pregnant second wife. He assumes Nick is equally well off. In fact when Nick and Meg went to Morgan's place in the evening by invitation, with a number of guests, mostly intellectuals, Morgan proceeds to explain how Nick was his influence as a young man, how knowing Nick and the things he stood for propelled Morgan to success in his career. But Nick gave a quite different talk, and put everything into perspective. Things weren't going well at all.At first it seems Nick and Meg are not age-matched very well but in fact the actors are almost the same age, he about 63 during filming and she about 62. They were celebrating 30 years. My wife and I enjoyed it, in fact it allowed us to reminisce about our own trips to Paris and other parts of Europe, dealing with the foreign languages, the strange hotels and strange menus. All the main actors are superb.SPOILERS: What Meg didn't know was Nick had been sacked from his job as a small college professor. Apparently he told a girl "If you would spend less time on your hair and more time on your studies..." and a complaint got him booted. What Nick didn't know is Meg was fed up with her teaching job and wanted to do something different, and it seemed that may mean leaving Nick completely. Which would have devastated him. But in the process they clearly realize how much they love each other, even though they found they could not pay their very high hotel bill when it was time to leave. Morgan to the rescue!!