Starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Amr Waked and Kristin Scott Thomas, Salmon Fishing in Yemen is the latest novel adaptation to make it to the big screen.

Fred (Ewan McGregor) is civil servant working in fisheries, who finds himself at the helm of an ambitious project – to bring thousands of Salmon to a newly created river in Yemen. This is all part of a great scheme conceived by Sheikh Muhummad (Amr Waked) and soon Fred discovers how miserable his life has been and how dynamic it could be; especially with the beautiful Harriet (Emily Blunt).

There are some great performances; McGregor finally feeling comfortable in more middle-aged role, Amr Waked as the very likeable Sheikh Muhammed and Kristin Scott Thomas relishing a true panto evil queen role. And there are great moments, most for me involving the said Kristin Scott Thomas, whose fag smoking political spinner has not just the PM under her thumb, but just about everyone else as well.

Director Lasse Hallstrom does perhaps over do the ‘salmon running’ imagery, but I did love his integration of multi media images such as Google Earth and the superbly ironic instant messages between Scott Thomas and the PM.

As a feel good movie, Salmon Fishing in Yemen delivers, but I can’t help feeling that the love story between Blunt and McGregor almost gets in the way of everything else. There is a undercurrent of political satire running throughout the film from the impact of change in the Yemen to the disaster of Government in the UK, but all this seems to get washed away with the rather surprising romance between cold fish McGregor and even colder fish Blunt.

Based on the book by Paul Torday (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Torday/e/B001IR3C4K) Salmon Fishing in Yemen opens in the UK on April 20th 2012.