The Sweet Shop is a quirky British romance that is rather like a piece of candy itself – not too complicated, but sweet, and consumed quickly.
The film begins with a short prologue introducing two important characters: Jarvis, a popular guitar player, and Katie, the girl who has a crush on him. You don’t see much of Jarvis in these first scenes.
Soon enough the movie jumps to the present day, when Jarvis and Katie are in their mid-twenties. Much has changed for both in the intervening years – although the two knew each other as children, their lives have gone in very different directions. Jarvis is now a famous musician, and Katie is still running her grandfather’s sweet shop in the village where they both grew up. When Jarvis’s mother dies, he returns home for the first time in 12 years, and discovers that coming home is more complicated than he expected. Katie and Jarvis start spending a fair amount of time together, much to the irritation of Jarvis’s current model girlfriend, who tips-off a reporter about Jarvis’s location. As the reporter, played by our own Matt Lewis, snoops around, Jarvis comes to realize that not everything in the village was worth leaving behind, and Katie comes to question why she chose to stay there in the first place.
Matt Lewis’s short turn as the reporter was well done, even if he only appeared in a few scenes. The Sweet Shop was shot in 2010, and so as a Harry Potter fan it was an added bonus to get a chance to see how his appearance has changed in the last three years. My only real complaint about the film is that he wasn’t in it more!
Despite attempts to add character depth, such as scenes which suggest that Jarvis’s father was abusive, The Sweet Shop doesn’t venture very far into the realm of emotional complication. Both Katie and Jarvis have some baggage, but they seem to deal with it fairly rationally and without a lot of drama. Unlike most romantic comedies I’ve seen, there’s no major upset that puts a rift between the two leads. Instead, everything progresses in a much more measured way – a trait that I think is to the film’s credit. It’s still the movies, but it’s a love story that’s slightly more realistic, which makes it all the sweeter. The Sweet Shop is a fun movie if nothing else, definitely worth checking out on a rainy day.
Guest Blogger is Jessica, MuggleNet Journalist – Follow her @BagginsIndeed on Twitter
