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Rating:  -
Even with Nicole Kidman starring in this movie, it was not her best film. I found the story a bit ridiculous. It seemed to be a low-budget film as well. Pass up on this one.
Rating:  -
Ben Chaplin plays John, a lonely, socially inept bank teller who gets a mail-order bride, Nadia (Nicole Kidman), off the internet, even though one of his obviously compatible coworkers (Kate Evans) keeps flirting with him.
Nadia can't speak English. John is annoyed and calls the mail-order company wanting a refund, until Nadia communicates with him through the international language of heavy petting and bondage. They talk for quite a while. Still, this makes for difficult conversation at restaurants, so John purchases a Russian to English dictionary, hoping to surprise Nadia with a love letter written in Russian for her birthday.
Unfortunately, he's sidetracked by the arrival of Nadia's boisterous cousins Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz) and Alexei (Vincent Cassel) who want to celebrate her birthday, too. There's an uneasy tension between John and the cousins that mounts with each scene until Alexei finally explodes at John after he suspects John has inferred something else about his job of smoking meats, when he literally just meant smoked meats.
Spoiler:
The next morning, the two cousins are holding Nadia hostage, with demands that John rob his bank. He's given two bulky guitar cases to fill up with cash. From this point, "The Birthday Girl" grows more and more implausible , starting as John waltzes through the bank, carrying the two cases while most of his supervisors are distracted in a stress-reducing "I'll break your fall" seminar (One person stands behind another coworker who falls backward, trusting to be caught).
Someone finally notices the empty safe, an alarm bell sounds and John's on the run, in his car with Alexei, Nadia, and Yuri. Alexei and Nadia start making out in the backseat and John realizes he's been duped. Turns out, Alexei is Nadia's boyfriend, and they've been running this scam with various desperate saps with big money connections all over Europe. Nadia isn't even her real name. They tie John up in a hotel, and John must figure out how to untie the knots, and get his life back on track. Will John and Nadia get back together? Does she really like him? Will the bad guys get caught? What do you think it takes to build a girl robot? How are your gardening skills?
Rating: -
Not a bad little movie but it could have been either very funny (as it starts out) or a really good suspense/drama (as it ends). But instead, its about 50% of each.
Rating:  -
I thought that the "gun as cigarette lighter" prop/cliché had gone out of style over two decades ago. I suppose, though, that BIRTHDAY GIRL would feel more at home in 1981 than 2001. Perhaps it may have even felt fresh then and could have had Chevy Chase as the lead and Goldie Hawn as his comedic foil.
Instead, Ben Chaplin plays John, a banker with a house overrun by ants and an inability to find romance in his quaint English town. (I imagine that John's ant problem has some symbolic meaning but I never felt inclined to glean what it might be.) John selects a mail order Russian bride who arrives in the form of Nadia (Nicole Kidman), a dark-haired beauty who refuses to speak English. Of course, she can-we discover this at one of the many predictable turning points of the film that stick out like brightly-colored pushpins in a Romantic Comedy Road Map.
Nadia takes John on a walk on the SOMETHING WILD side, fulfilling his BDSM fantasies until the obligatory antagonists arrive. Two uninvited Russian houseguests goad the film to its inevitable turn with John stealing £90K to save his Cyrillic sweetheart. The movie continues on course with no surprises or items of interest that might separate it from any other films of its ilk.
BIRTHDAY GIRL is a lite snack of a film. It's custom made for an afternoon showing on cable when you have to do your laundry. You can toss your last load into the dryer, start up a new one, and fold your last one without fear of missing anything of great import in the time you're away.
Rating: -
First of all the lack of research by the film-maker is appalling! The fact that this simply could not have happened as shown detracts from any credibility the film could have had. You can NOT simply order a woman over the internet like you buy a book! Neither the USA or England will give a woman a [fiance'] visa unless the man first visits her in her country, establishes a real relationship with her & can doccument this to immigration authorities satisfaction.
As someone who did VISIT Russia and later marry a Russian, I know the facts! "Mail order brides" are just a figment of someone's imagination [maybe jealous feminists?] Yes there are agencies who will introduce you & forward your emails to a woman or women but the rest is up to you and her to decide. And NO it would not be possible to bring someone to your country unless they spoke some English! Even movies should be somewhat accurate--this is NOT!
I watched it again with my Russian wife and she was livid! She said it makes all Russians into criminals and all Brits as stupider than a box of rocks! She gave it a -5 stars! That's right negative rating. Kidman should have passed on this one & they should have hired a real Russian woman if they wanted to portray a Russian--even this badly!
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