Don’t let the title fool you. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is not a documentary about globetrotting Western fishermen casting their rods in various Middle Eastern oases. Rather, it’s an entertaining romantic comedy/drama directed by Lasse Hallstrom featuring excellent performances from Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.
Dr. Alfred “Fred” Jones (McGregor) is an uptight and nerdy British fisheries expert stuck in a stale marriage. Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Blunt) is the London-based financial consultant to Yemeni billionaire Sheikh Muhammad (Amr Waked). Turns out the sheik is quite the fly-fisherman, so much so that he envisions bringing the sport – and the 10,000 North Atlantic salmon required to make the dream come true – to the Yemen via the construction of a massive water management project that includes a dam and a river to allow the salmon to run upstream to spawn.
When Harriet asks Fred – an expert fly-fisherman himself – to evaluate the sheik’s plan, he reluctantly does so and quickly dismisses the idea as impossible. At the same time, however, Patricia Maxwell (a deliciously icy Kristin Scott Thomas), press secretary to the British prime minister, learns of the sheik’s idea and sees it as the perfect “good news” story for English-Middle Eastern relations. Consequently, Fred soon finds himself forced into working with Harriet on what for him amounts to nothing more than a rich man’s absurd fantasy that has somehow gained the support of the British government. Travel and a budding romance ensue.
After a visit with Harriet to the sheik’s Scottish estate, the sheik’s knowledge of fishing and his conviction to the project manage to win Fred over. With his own wife out of town on an extended business trip, Fred accompanies Harriet on an exploratory trip to the Yemeni construction site, where Fred fully embraces the possibility of the project and develops a growing love for Harriet, whose British soldier boyfriend is missing in action in Afghanistan.
When it’s decided that shipping 10,000 wild Atlantic salmon to Yemen is out of the question, Fred realizes they have to take a chance on releasing farmed salmon, a huge risk as farmed fish have no river experience. Will farmed salmon run upstream once released? Fred thinks they will. According to him, it’s in their DNA to run, and he convinces Sheikh Muhammad to give it a try. The guy has billions. Why not gamble some spare change?
Will Fred and Harriet get together? Will the fish go the right way? Will the sheik pull off the project and bring water and recreational fishing to a parched environment and struggling local economy? Well, this is a romantic comedy with an obligatory feel-good ending, so it doesn’t take a cinematic genius to answer such questions. The good news for filmgoers is that Salmon Fishing in the Yemen avoids many stereotypical romantic comedy/drama “rules” and manages to stay fresh from start to finish. In short, you know what’s going to happen, but how it happens will more than likely surprise you.
Ultimately, McGregor and Blunt make the movie worth seeing. The two have an adorable chemistry that grows stronger with every scene they share. You can’t help but root for them. It’s refreshing to see McGregor as an uptight bureaucrat with a sensitive side. He nails the part so well that it’s difficult to imagine anybody else playing Fred. As for Blunt, her portrayal of the professional but vulnerable Harriet only adds to her status as one of the best young actresses working today.
Many will question the impossibility of the sheik’s salmon fishing project and the improbability of the relationship between Fred and Harriet. Neither should work, but they do. And that’s exactly the point. Sometimes the impossible is possible. Heck, even an awful title like Salmon Fishing in the Yemen makes sense once you see the film.
Well, sort of.
