Stop Hitting Me On The Head With Metaphors.

By the end of the film you will understand that Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is a metaphor.

It is a metaphor for faith making dreams come true. It is a metaphor for life, where we must all swim against the current to find our spiritual home. It is a metaphor for politics and business: through mutual exchange we might just all learn to get along. It's a metaphor that says: in a funny sort of way we all have to swim uphill to get what we really want - but if we don't know which way the river runs will we just be swimming the wrong way. It's a metaphor for...yes! yes! I get it! Stop hitting me on the head with your bloody metaphors!

I've not read the book but I imagine it's a pretty interesting and enjoyable read that mixes political satire with a human story and weaves those metaphors into a subtle and effective mix.

The film however is a piece of fluff that has nothing much to say beyond the usual rom-com cliches. Ewan Mcgregor doesn't like girl, then quite likes girl, then loses girl to another man, then gets girl back when girl decides she likes fish more than soldier boys. I felt sorry for soldier boy. He survived all that time in the desert thinking about her but then gets dumped when he says one little offhand thing about golf courses. Men! They just don't understand anything about salmon fishing in the Yemen. Anyhow, the moral of this tale seems to be this:  dump your wife if you're not getting enough sex and then shack up with a younger, prettier, more interesting model in an exciting foreign locale. Not only will you get more sex, be happier and have an interesting life, you will also be helping bring people together on a global scale. If you still haven't got it - here's a shot of a salmon doing a U-turn!

There's no chemistry at all between the leads and all the acting seems stiff and forced. We're supposed to care about Ewan Mcgregor's character because he's autistic - autism here clearly equates to boring. We're supposed to care about Emily Blunt's character because she's grieving over someone who may not even be dead and who she has only known for three weeks. We're supposed to care about the Sheikh because he's like really wise and deep and stuff. I didn't like any of the characters at all, in fact I think I just prefered it when you were hitting me on the head with metaphors.