Review: Chalet Girl

If you tend to steer clear of rom-coms avoid this as its a really terrible film, arguably worse than last year's Amy Adams 'Oirish' rom-com Leap Year.

Kim (Felicity Jones) is a working-class girl who ends up working in the Austrian Alps in a chalet owned by an obscenely rich banker (Bill Nighy).

Here she catches the attention of the son Jonny (Ed Westwick). But what chance is there for their feelings to flourish when he is engaged to a rich heiress, a match firmly championed by his fearsome mother (Brook Shields)?

It's the spiritless calculation that gets you. It is quintessentially British in as much as the service is terrible. the film plonks down its plot accoutrements like a surly waitress banging down the cutlery in front of you.

There's the handsome rich banker for her to fall in love with, here's the ski board contest with the big money prize for her to win, happy now?

In the absence of any laughs, the lengthy snow sport sequences that pad out the running length are just about the only real entertainment.

Felicity Jones does her best to make it bearable and deserves much better. I was less convinced by Westwick as her beau. He has a face made for playing posh, privileged bankers but maybe not sympathetic posh, privileged bankers.

He has those generic well-bred, slightly reptilian good looks that traditionally keep any number of British performers in work – he could be an estate agent in a Twilight film.

In the film, Kim has to struggle for acceptance from the ranks of posh girls who usually monopolise the chalet girl jobs.

The film strongly infers that such ladies (who were once known as Sloane Rangers) are generally none too bright. The film was greeted in near total silence by an auditorium packed with such ladies. But, as we shuffled out afterwards, I kept overhearing 'Yar, good wasn't it,' 'Yar, really good'.

Chalet Girl (12A)

Director: Phil Traill

With: Felicity Jones, Ed Westwick, Tamsin Egerton, Bill Bailey, Bill Nighy and Brooke Shields

Length: 97 mins

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