The Sabrina remake is a lot like Snow White and the Huntsman. There’s a lot of enjoyable movie scaffolded upon a miscast lead. In this case, it’s not the charisma-void of Kristen Stewart mumbling reluctantly through Snow White’s lines, but a 53-year-old Harrison Ford playing a character clearly written to be about 40 years old opposite a 30-year-old woman written to be maybe 25.
Based on their ages, and the way (a very lovely) Julia Ormond seems constantly controlled by a man old enough to be her father, should call for a different Sabrina/Linus dynamic. It’s like they cast Harrison Ford and then rewrote nothing, expecting to get a relationship more akin to that between Cher and her stepbrother in Clueless. An older brother vibe, yes. “You would have dated my mom,” no.
Ormond’s Sabrina seems sort of baffled by him, and overwhelmed, and just ends up going along with everything all the time. Ford is so rigid. He puts a tremor in his voice when talking about Sabrina that should be endearing, but he’s kind of a brick wall opposite Ormond. The actual chemistry isn’t there.
Romantic movies are lovely character pieces, but you can’t have a movie without the most important character, which is the relationship between leads.
I love the music, the silly humor, the dreamy atmosphere, the Cinderella story. It’s a nice vibe. I always enjoy myself watching it. I also throw popcorn at Linus and tell him to take his creepy hands off that poor girl.
