In Last Chance Harvey, two people meet, spend the day together, start to show signs of friendship and then something more, and are briefly kept apart by a plot contrivance as old as the hills that puts a dent in their relationship. Note that I said briefly kept apart. The movie wisely doesn't make a big deal out of it, nor do the characters. This is not a formula movie, although it never really breaks from tradition. It's a romantic comedy with a lot of warmth, some fantastic dialogue, two wonderful performances, and an unnecessary subplot that never really goes anywhere. If writer-director Joel Hopkins had just focused entirely on the characters instead of expectations, he'd have one of the best films of the year.

This is a very good movie, though, and I can live with that. The two people at the center of the story are Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) and Kate Walker (Emma Thompson). These two actors had worked previously together on 2006's Stranger Than Fiction, but get to share a lot more screen time together here. As the film opens, both characters are at low points in their middle aged lives. Harvey's a failed jazz pianist who writes commercial jingles. He's divorced, and freely admits that he was probably never the best when it came to being a husband to his ex-wife (Kathy Baker), or a father to his adult daughter Susan (Liane Balaban) who is getting married. He flies to London for her wedding, only to learn that Susan wants her stepfather (James Brolin) to be the one who walks her down the aisle. Not long after that, he gets a phone call from his boss saying he's fired. He starts to talk to Kate when they're the only two people at an airport bar. They met briefly once before, but as they begin to talk, they learn they have a lot in common. Kate has her share of troubles as well. She's single, she's recovering from a very bad blind date she had the night before, and her overbearing and paranoid mother (Eileen Atkins) keeps on calling her on her cell phone about how she believes the next door neighbor is a serial killer. While her current problems are not quite as bad as Harvey's, we can tell she's had her share of disappointments in the life leading up to the moment we first meet her.

We follow the two during a 24 hour period as they walk about London, talking about themselves, their mistakes, and their insecurities. This is when Last Chance Harvey rings true, both in its dialogue and in the way the characters behave. Harvey and Kate are ordinary people, and the screenplay doesn't try to make them out to be special. It's almost as if the camera is following them by accident, and somehow we get wrapped up into their stories and their lives. It doesn't even need to be said that Hoffman and Thompson are wonderful actors, and if you put them together, you get undeniable chemistry. It's entertaining just seeing them talk, and playing these two shy individuals opening up to one another. I enjoyed listening to them talk so much, I kind of was disappointed when the movie would cut to a montage of them walking about the streets of London. They're still talking, but the music is playing over their dialogue, so we can't hear it. You don't drown out wonderful characters like Harvey and Kate with music.

You also don't put them through tired romantic movie conventions, which the movie does at one point. My heart began to sink a little when I realized the movie was going to use a trick as old as the hills - Have the lovers be separated due to a misunderstanding. I won't go into too much detail, but it's the old scenario where the lovers agree to meet at a certain place, but something happens that prevents one of them from being able to make it, and the other thinks that he/she has been stood up. Do we really need to see this again? Do we really want to see Harvey and Kate go through it? If it must be, I can live with it here, because the movie at least does not abandon credibility completely. Yes, they do not meet and there is a misunderstanding, but it is not a huge deal. We don't spend the rest of the movie watching these likeable characters forced to act like idiots. There is an apology, and they treat it like adults. I was impressed with how it was resolved. Less impressive is the entire subplot with Kate's mother and the neighbor, which seems out of place and distracts from everything that works.

And there is a lot here that works. As I mentioned, the movie has a great ear for dialogue. There's a wonderfully written scene where Harvey gives a speech to his daughter and ex-wife at the wedding reception that is heartfelt, touching, and a little bit sad. The beauty of Hopkins' screenplay is how adult it is. Everyone is mature, and no one makes rash decisions in order to benefit the plot. The movie may be light and frothy, but it is never brainless. I also liked the way the movie kept on playing against our expectations of the romantic comedy cliches it employs. Yes, there's a climax with a character racing to the airport, but for once it's not to stop the other person from leaving. The movie manages to ring true in just about every scene, except for a few rare missteps, such as the sequence where Harvey decides to take Kate as his date for the wedding reception, and we get a montage of Kate trying on various goofy dresses before finding the right one. Why not just cut to them arriving at the place?

If Last Chance Harvey disappoints in any way, it's only because it's so good as it is, and we want it to be even better. Even so, this is a wonderful and surprisingly intelligent early-year treat for filmgoers who may be looking for something a little more substantial than Paul Blart: Mall Cop this weekend. It's not deep stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but it's honest and real, and it has some all-around wonderful performances. You know a movie is working when you're sitting there and saying you'd like to know these characters in real life if you could. You also know it's working when the end comes and you wish you could have spent more time watching them, while stripping away the stuff that didn't work.

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