All the Real Girls

ALL THE REAL GIRLS
COLUMBIA TRISTAR
RELEASED 1 August 2003

From a wonderful opening, it’s clear that ‘All The Real Girls’ is going to be a love story with a difference. Small-town lothario Paul (Paul Schneider) leads a hedonistic lifestyle typical of a 22-year old – girls, booze, mates and cars, never looking further than the next day. His world is turned upside down when he meets worldly Noel (Zooey Deschanel), home after years of boarding school with no firm plans for the future. The pair fall in love and become devoted to one another, but each is the others’ first love and first loves rarely last. The story has been done before but not with as much originality and honesty as this, with characters you really do grow to love. It’s so richly filmed you can almost smell the trees and the smoke from the factories, and each scene seems glossed over with a yellow, summer glow, much like the feeling I had as the credits rolled. And finally, I’ve never seen a two-legged dog before. It was walking on it’s front legs. Great!

FOUR OUT OF FIVE