Baby, it’s cold outside (even here in Florida) and that could mean it’s the right time for a date movie — old-fashioned or newfangled — at the multiplex. Unless, of course, we’re talking about a romantic comedy of the lowest-common-denominator variety.

Which brings us to Leap Year, the first really annoying rom-com of 2010, notably only for the fact that the Irish scenery largely chews up the performances of the movie’s actors and its generic script.

Click here to read my review of the film in Las Vegas City Life, or see the full text below:

Leap Year.
Starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. Directed by Anand Tucker.
97 minutes; Rated PG.

A little bit It Happened One Night, a little bit quaint ’90s across-the-pond comedy, Leap Year gives gifted actor Amy Adams a golden opportunity to sink her chops into trite dialogue and drive a plot that’s utterly and entirely predictable.

And so she does, with admirable gusto, trotting down byways and up hills in heels, rolling in mud, stepping on a cow patty, wounding an Irish bride, and tripping on her own naiveté. She does her level best to demonstrate that all an organized and highly motivated woman really needs to make her life complete is a good trek with a rather slovenly fellow who’s her opposite in every respect. You’ve come a long way, Amy.

Adams (Julie & Julia) is Anna, a Boston real-estate “stager” with a fashion flair and a preppy cardiologist boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott), who loves his Blackberry and talking shop more than he loves his longtime girlfriend. The two are in the midst of staging their entrée into high society — an apartment in an exclusive coop ruled by a board as picky as Anna is controlling. Her one-dimensionality is a flaw all but spelled out by the script: “You know I don’t like surprises,” she tells her beau, early on.

Naturally, all that perfectionism goes by the wayside when she travels to Ireland, to make a Leap Day marriage proposal to James, in Dublin for a medical conference. Waylaid in a tiny village, she’s thrown together with innkeeper Declan (Matthew Goode, Watchmen).

Before you can say “blarney,” the two are engaged in hot foreplay — trading insults, preparing a meal together, stomping around the ruins of a medieval castle, taking in spectacular Irish vistas, joshing with crusty pub dwellers.

Any filmgoer unable to predict how it all turns out should be forced to watch this rom-com over and over again.