Film review: One Chance
Nice guys finish last. Except in the case of Paul Potts, a chubby 30-something Welshman with a chipped tooth, who has always dreamed about becoming an opera singer, but whose upbringing in Port Talbot, a mining town on Wales’ south coast, did not give any indication that his dream might come true, short of divine intervention.
Such divine intervention eventually came in the form of the television series Britain’s Got Talent, which would go on to spawn multiple local versions in other countries around the world in the years to come. Potts sang the aria “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s opera Turandot, and the rest was history, until the Weinstein brothers and Simon Cowell, one of the judges on Britain’s Got Talent, decided to make a film about it.
The result, titled One Chance, is filled with predictable turns of events, and the barely two-dimensional character of Potts will not win any awards for screenwriting, but it is Potts’ longtime girlfriend, Julz (Alexandra Roach), whom he tracked down online and who is utterly sweet and infinitely patient, who gives the film its many facets.
The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel does exactly what he set out to do: We get a chronological story of Potts (James Corden), who struggles with bullying throughout his life and whose confidence never achieves the level of those around him.
To read the full review, visit The Prague Post.
(Still of Colm Meaney and James Corden in One Chance. Photo by Photo by Liam Daniel – © 2013 The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.)
