Pun Salad

This is a nice little movie, which IMDB bills as a "Comedy | Drama | Romance", and Netflix genrifies as "Comedy, Romantic Comedies, Romantic Dramas, Dramas Based on Contemporary Literature, Dramas Based on the Book, United Kingdom".

The main characters are Dr. Alfred ("Fred") Jones (played by Ewan McGregor) and Harriet ("Harriet") Chetwode-Talbot (played by Emily Blunt). Fred is a low-level bureaucrat in the UK's Fisheries Department; Emily is a hard-charging consultant hired by Yemeni Sheikh ("Sheikh") Muhammed to do something totally impractical: engineer a waterway in Yemen in which salmon can run, breed, and be caught by intrepid fishermen.

UK troops are getting shot at and blown up in Afghanistan, so the the UK government, desperate for some good news out of the general region, swings its mighty weight behind the project. Specifically, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary Patricia ("Profane Bitch") Maxwell, (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) starts pulling the strings to make it all happen.

We get to know Fred and Harriet pretty well. Fred's in a passion-free marriage; he also has Asperger's. But (as I observed to Mrs. Salad during the movie), he's very high-functioning, so it's more like half-Asperger's. (Hah! I kill me.) Harriet has a boyfriend, a soldier conveniently sent off to Afghanistan just when Harriet and Fred start working closely on the project. And you see where this might lead, right?

There's some cynical commentary on British politics; some Yemenis are bitterly opposed to the project, and proceed in the way folks in that part of the world do when they disagree: attempt murder and sabotage.

Not bad, directed competently by Lasse Hellström, but it seems much longer than the 107 minutes claimed by IMDB. Movies labeled as comedies are usually funnier, but Emily Blunt is easy on the eyes, so it kind of evens out.