How Leap Year's hilariously stereotypical portrayal of Ireland made me feel closer to my ancestral home

'Leap Year' gets almost nothing about Ireland right. I still love it.

Leap Year.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

By many and possibly all accounts, Leap Year — the long-forgotten Amy Adams vehicle chronicling one woman's odyssey to propose to her boyfriend on Feb. 29 — is a bad film.

During its theatrical run in 2010, The New York Times called it "so witless, charmless, and unimaginative that it can be described as a movie only in a strictly technical sense." Time labeled it the worst film of the year. "As if economic downturn and the confederacy of dunces at the top weren't bad enough," wrote Dublin-based music magazine Hot Press, per Irish Central, in its review, "Leap Year revives some horrors of old. Remember the crap Ireland from movies of yesteryear? Well, crap Ireland is back on screen and crapper than ever."

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.