Juliet, Naked: it’s an intriguing starting point for a romantic comedy, and Jesse Peretz takes it the distance to come up with a charming film. It’s not novel, but it works very well in what it’s trying to do. The characters are lovely, refreshingly older, all messy in a way, and it’s easy to root for them all, in spite of any reservation their actions may cause. They work so well because the cast is convincing in their roles: Chris O’Dowd as the sweetly obsessive boy-man, Ethan Hawke as the shabby and well-intentioned has-been, and Rose Byrne as the sad but nevertheless luminous center of the love triangle; young Azhy Robertson is cute in the proper measure. Aesthetically, the film is far from flashy; it looks good but it’s not where the efforts were. Good selection of songs.
