Man Up

The premise really happened. Screenwriter Tess Morris was approached by a man at Waterloo station in London who asked whether she was his blind date, and wrote the script out of that. The same thing happens in the film. Nancy, thirty-four, is on a train to her parents' wedding anniversary, sitting beside a twenty-four-year-old on her way to a blind date, and notices the girl has left behind the book she was supposed to bring. At the station Jack, forty and divorced, sees a woman holding that book and walks over. Nancy does not correct him. How long the lie can last is the only source of tension, and the point is this: standing in for someone else's date, Nancy is not obliged to be herself, so for once she relaxes. Ben Palmer directed. Simon Pegg plays Jack and Lake Bell plays Nancy, using an English accent for the part, with Rory Kinnear and Olivia Williams in support. Who it is for: viewers who like fast, sharp-tongued British romantic comedy set across a single night. Who it is not for: anyone who interrogates the setup. The romantic comedy built on a lie carries its usual problem here, and halfway through the film admits as much itself.