Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, review Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is the kind of film you might find on the DVD shelf of a holiday cottage, and that's not necessarily a criticism. This romantic comedy about two good souls brought together by a Middle Eastern water management project is cinema at its most easily digestible: its cast is as unthreateningly attractive as its sense of humour is cosily inclusive. It's directed by Lasse Hallström, an artisanal spinner of harmless fluff such as Chocolat and Dear John, and scripted by Simon Beaufoy, writer of The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire, with much of the tart satire of Paul Torday's popular source novel drained out. With an Alec Guinness-ish twinkle, Ewan McGregor plays Dr Alfred Jones, an unhappily married scientist who's drafted onto a British government-backed scheme to bring game fishing to the Arabian Peninsula. The project is sponsored by a genial sheikh (Amr Waked), who got a taste for the sport on his Scottish estate and wants to bring it to his homeland. This is the kind of film in which sheikhs don't have reasons for doing things; they just do them, and smile beatifically. Handling the project's finances is Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), an investment consultant pining for her soldier boyfriend who's billeted in Afghanistan. The job involves Harriet and Fred visiting a range of picturesque locations in Scotland and the Middle East, and their relationship moves from awkward bickering to faltering romance in the time-honoured fashion. McGregor and Blunt have a wonderfully tingly chemistry as the two mismatched small fry forced to swim upstream together, but their other halves are treated humanely by Beaufoy's mild-mannered script - with one of them a serving war hero, they'd have to be. Greasing the project's wheels is the prime minister's shark-like press secretary Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas), who is desperate to turn the sheikh's plan into a positive Middle East news story. It's a lip-smackingly vinegary turn from Scott Thomas, who plays Patricia as a kind of Malcolm Tucker in a twinset, snapping at her teenage sons and errant politicians with equal relish. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen has a similarly soft-tummied feel to The Best Exotic Maraigold Hotel; it's perhaps best described as a second-tier Ealing Comedy shot by the Boden catalogue. It's a disarmingly nice hour and three quarters of gentle romance and even gentler comedy, and there are worse things that can be said about a film than that.