Leap Year is not quality filmmaking; it is, in fact, a little bit rubbish. It doesn’t get close to the ambitious heights of some cinema fare but what it does give us isn’t half bad either: an entertaining couple of hours. It fulfils its own modest rom-com brief down to the letter and despite my normal reservations about such mindless riffs concerning the power of ‘true love’, I have to admit that I was slightly taken by it.

Amy Adams has one of the more irritating, controlling characters to get to grips with in the form of Boston-bred Anna. Disappointed yet again by the failure of her boyfriend of four years, Jeremy, to go down on bended knee she decides to take a ‘leap’ of faith herself (if you can’t cope with this gentle pun, this might not be the film for you) and propose to him. Of course though, we must remember that Anna is a relic of a more chivalrous age so she observes the old Irish folklore that there is only one day a woman can propose to a man: on a leap day. And there we have it, a perfect excuse for a haphazard journey across Ireland for a spot of character reformation with some obscene flirting along the way.

The script seems to try its best to make you hate Anna but clearly it hadn’t reckoned with quite how endearing Adams can be. Her Irish hunk of a love interest, Declan (Matthew Goode), is also charming as a welcome cynical anecdote to the layers of cheese that you can practically see melting through the script at its more tired moments. They enjoy a Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet style courtship that starts off all scowls and petty arguments and ends in some delightful banter about him washing her $600 shoes. Oh those Irish, they know how to win a lassie’s heart. The smultz is, inevitably, layered on thicker than an Essex girl’s slap but redeeming moments come around often enough for that not to be a major sticking point. The romantic comedy is known for its corny first kisses but having a drunken Irishman scream "Kiss the gal!" to our two leads is about as good as they get.

There is no pretending that Leap Year is a laugh-a-minute but there are several decent gags hidden amidst the predictable change of heart that young Anna goes through. The Irish stereotypes come in thick and fast (apparently the whole of Ireland is stocked purely by superstitious, Guiness-guzzling old men) but whilst some may find this offensive I had no such moral qualms. Leap Year certainly isn’t the most original/hilarious/well-written film but if I don’t choke on the sentiment at the end, it’s a done a good enough job for me.