“Making the Impossible Possible”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a love story, and I don’t mean the love that fishermen have for fishing, although there is also that.

On the other hand, Steven Wright says in his act, “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore looking like an idiot.”

In this movie, the comment is made that the only thing that fishermen care about is fish, and that they are patient and virtuous.

The fishermen, of course, are patient and virtuous, not the fish.

No, we should remember that fish are so dumb that they can’t tell the difference between a real fly and an artificial fly with a hook in it at the end of a fishing line.

Emily Blunt plays Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, and she has a client who is an avid fisherman, Sheik Muhammed from Yemen, who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his desert country.

So, Harriet contacts the salmon expert in the British Fisheries, Dr. Alfred Jones, played by Ewan McGregor, to ask for his help in fulfilling the dream of the sheik, who naturally has enough money to make it happen.

Dr. Jones turns down Harriet’s request, telling her that the project is fundamentally infeasible.

In the meantime, however, Patricia Maxwell, who is the press secretary for the Prime Minister and who is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, tells her people, “We need a good news story from the Middle East and a big one. We need it now.”

So, with pressure from the top of the government, Dr. Jones is practically blackmailed into working with Harriet to make Sheik Muhammed’s dream come true.

And with two attractive people working closely together, romantic sparks are bound to fly, right?

Not so fast, Dear Audience, because Dr. Jones is married, and Harriet has a serious boyfriend.

Dr. Jones changes his assessment of the project’s success from fundamentally infeasible to theoretically possible, the sheik is willing to pay 50 million pounds, and so the problem now is to make it all happen.

Did I mention that there are dissidents in Yemen who believe that the sheik’s dream of building a river in the desert and stocking it with fish is insulting to Allah?

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen makes the impossible possible in so many different ways, and not just in fishing.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”