Salmon Fishing In The Yemen

You know how they say you should stop when you are ahead? The same goes for movies. Like George Costanza, hit your high note and walk away, before you say something that ruins it.

Emily Blunt stars as Harriett - a consultant for Sheikh Muhammed (Amr Waked) of Yemen. His Excellency is a huge fan of fly fishing, and thinks bringing the past time to his desert homeland will create bonds among the people that will overcome class distinctions. To do so, Harriett contacts one of the leading experts in fishing and fish, Dr. Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor), who feels the whole expedition is foolhardy (it is the desert after all).

However, as the British government, which employs Dr. Jones, searches for some feel good story to showcase (or create) positive relations with the Middle East, Dr. Jones finds himself forced into making the impossible become possible in this fishing folly.

Can Dr. Jones find a way for the salmon to survive and thrive in Yemen?

Will everyone be able to overcome their personal troubles to help?

When trying to be lighthearted, fun, and quirky, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is the kind of entertaining, cute movie that can take you away from the troubles of life and put a smile on your face no matter how much of the story you can predict. However, director Lasse Hallstrom and writer Simon Beaufoy (based on the novel by Paul Torday) add a dark, sinister streak to the movie that almost ruins it.

Blunt and McGregor make for a nice couple as the two form a friendship bordering on forbidden love, as they are committed to other people. It's the tried-and-true formula of a stuffy, professorial guy hitting it off with the vivacious gal (who is out of his league), but doesn't feel overdone and provides each one some moments to make us laugh, while touching the romantic inside each and every one of us.

Even the sillier story about the planning and plotting of the big experiment provides plenty of laughs, but Hallstrom and Beaufoy act like they don't want us to giggle and feel good. They allow Salmon Fishing in the Yemen to take too severe of a turn into a dangerous place that ruins the whole tone.

Plus, the two don't trust the story enough, and allow further complications than needed. That stuff might be in the original novel, but you aren't required to add it to the movie, especially when it feels so out of place in the context of the film, or just rehashed because someone couldn't come up with a new or original idea for a complication that would fit in.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is fine enough, but you can see how it could have been so much more.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is rated PG-13 for some violence and sexual content, and brief language.