Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!

A small-town grocery clerk (Kate Bosworth) wins a date with a ne’er-do-well movie star (Josh Duhamel); he follows her home to West Virginia and begins to woo her in earnest, responding to her wholesome sweetness—and alarming the guy (Topher Grace) who has secretly loved her all his life. Victor Levin’s script strains credulity (to say the least) and moves with unseemly haste in the opening scenes. Later, it seems to stumble from one idea to the next. What saves the film is the acting: Bosworth brings real charm to a character that might easily have come off as a simpering ninny, Duhamel is endearingly narcissistic, and Grace agonizes over Bosworth with grueling poignancy. Nathan Lane and Sean Hayes add nice cameos as Duhamel’s entourage, and so does Kathryn Hahn as a tattoo-spangled bartender.