Drive-By Review

The Girl in the Cafe - An HBO/BBC production, written by Richard Curtis ("Love, Actually", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill") and starring Bill Nighy (aging rock star Billy Mack in "Love Actually") and Kelly McDonald. The film exists to promote an agenda for the upcoming G8 summit in Scotland, namely the eradication of extreme poverty, which is responsible, if you are to believe the film (and I do), for the unnecessary deaths of 30,000 children worldwide every day - that's one every three seconds. (Curtis is the man behind Comic Relief and is one of the organizers of the upcoming Live8 concerts). The movie is being promoted as a romantic comedy, and there is some of that, but I think it's much more undefinable. Nighy plays a painfully shy workaholic civil servant who one day meets a girl who is a quarter of a century younger than him in his local cafe and is a bit of an enigma. He invites her along to the G8 summit and it's through their relationship and conversations that we learn about the issues facing the G8. It's a sweet story about an unlikely pair and an emotionally engaging movie with a serious message. I recommend it.