I could pound out reviews for movies I love or movies I hate like rapid fire. I know what works and what doesn’t in those films – the only challenge is figuring out the frame.
For movies like “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” a pleasant but unremarkable little rom-com, writing a review is quite a bit tougher. I just feel nothing but ambivalent towards the film, and I don’t feel the need to take a hard positive or negative approach. In fact, it’s easiest to inch towards 400 words or so just dawdling and musing about the craft of reviewing film.
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” exists – I can’t say that I would recommend it, but then again, I don’t hate it by any means. None of it is bad, unless you consider not being very good to be a bad thing. Lasse Hallstrom is content to make a movie totally by the books, not reaching for anything more or anything less. There’s no disappointment that way, but there’s also no potential for greatness.
I suppose the romance between Ewan McGregor’s brilliant savant Fred Jones and Emily Blunt’s Harriet, a finance expert for a Sheikh in Yemen, is nice and pleasant. No sparks fly, but it’s not as painful as Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams in “The Vow” or anything like that.
As they work together to achieve a bizarre fantasy, making it possible to fish for salmon in the scorching country of Yemen, I suppose there is a slight feeling of uplift and happiness. But it doesn’t have the buoyancy of Hallstrom’s “The Cider House Rules,” and it doesn’t even come close to the transcendency of screenwriter Simon Beaufoy’s “Slumdog Millionaire.”
In other words, if you had to watch “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” there could be far worse things. But you will forget it almost immediately. In 10 years, if we still look at IMDb, I can imagine people will go, “OH! I remember that movie now,” when they look at the filmography of almost anyone involved with the film. B- / 
