2011 - SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN, entertaining romantic comedy

This is a very likable romantic comedy with two very attractive leads. The story is really featherweight. An Arab sheikh who happens to be a devotee of fly fishing decides he wants to populate a river in his country with salmon. To accomplish this he hires a fishery specialist who is assisted in this mission by a financial planner.  Because if you are going to raise fish who is better qualified than a financial planner.

The fishery specialist and the financial planner are played by Ian McGregor and Emily Blunt and you can’t get much more charming and charismatic than these two.  However this is a rom-com and there are few obstacles that stand in the way of true love before the end of the film.  One of the most entertaining characters in this film is Kristen Scott Thomas.  She plays the very tough Press Secretary to the British Prime Minister who is looking to exploit the fishing project for political purposes.  Thomas's character gets all the good dialog and she has razor sharp scene stealing comic timing.   

This type of well made romantic comedy really doesn't show up in movie theaters these days.  This genre has been taken over by streaming services that can pump out modestly budgeted love stories with no expensive A list actors.  They usually run about 90 minutes and are so poorly made and insubstantial that when one of them ends up being halfway decent film critics jump all over themselves blathering on about how good they sort of are when generally they’re not.

Getting back to the film.  It's well paced by the director Lasse Hallström it has some nice visual touches and good dialog.  What more can you ask for?  Yes this is the kind of film where you can say "I've seen it all before."  but usually it's not this well made.

The film was written by  Simon Beaufoy, the running time is 107 minutes.