La fille du chalet

There surely can't be too many people who come away from Chalet Girl saying that it didn't deliver what they expected it to. It's almost charmingly clichéd and completely predictable at every moment. Whether or not this will bother you or not is entirely down to your tolerance for the romantic-comedy genre. I personally would classify it as a perfectly watchable movie; although it is 100% unremarkable.

Its main angle I suppose is its setting. The Alps are very beautiful and this doesn't harm the film. The snowboarding part is dealt with in a relatively minor way, as the main thrust of the plot is of the comic and romantic kind - the snobbishness of skiers, the almost angelic goodness of the boarders, the tart with a heart, the posh boy who falls for the chalet girl, etc etc. It's all very one dimensional, although it does have to be said that leading actress Felicity Jones does make for a good enough principal girl; however, her male counterpart Ed Westwick did seem very wooden to me. And I still can't fathom why they went to the trouble of hiring a skilled comedian like Bill Bailey when all his character amounts to is a man who can't cook his dinner.

At the end of the day Chalet Girl is a chick-flick with snowboards. There's nothing new here but I've also seen Snowboard Academy, and that film makes this one seem like The Godfather by comparison. So there's a positive note to end this on.