It is insanely perverse of New Line Home entertainment to tout this downbeat film as a 'warm-hearted comedy'.
I didn't know what to expect from Mike Newell. He's made films of all genres and has recently made the Hollywood set with The Prince of Persia, though it was a bit of a flop, but still...
I liked his Enchanted April a great deal and Four Weddings and a Funeral had its charms and was very mainstream. So I had hopes of liking An Awfully Big Adventure as well. I was also curious to see the only film adaptation of a Beryl Bainbridge novel. I wasn't prepared for An Awfully Big Adventure being so strange and just plain weird.
This film boasts a splendid cast of actors, many of them long past their primes but then so are most of the characters in the movie.
The technical credits, music, cinematography and script are fine, the acting, as stated, is superb, but this is one of the most depressing films I've ever seen. The story is neurotic, childish and yet strangely touching, chock-full of Catholic suffering and self-flagellation.
The characters are drawn beautifully and the overall point of the story is well-taken, the devastation of war on human psyches and all that, but the ultimate point of the story, incest, is a shocking and seemingly irrelevant side swipe that threw this viewer's mind off center.
I waited for something deep to be revealed but the film simply stops with the sudden incest angle.
It's your basic sordid tale of a troupe of has-beens on their last legs in a Liverpool theatre. The young girl, Stella, is extremely odd and doesn't seem to possess a shred of innocence that I think we were supposed to think she possessed. She's naïve to be sure and inexperienced but innocent, no. And fantasy life borders on the psychotic. I have no doubt she ended up either a nun or a whore.
Georgina Cates gives a pretty great performance though she's very difficult to understand more often than not and I have been watching British/Irish/Scotch films for years. She trips over many of her lines in a self-conscious way, part of her character perhaps.
Alan Rickman is not quite as mush-mouthed as he usually is but I still don't understand the wild passion of his deathless legions of fans. I find him very boring most of the time, but he can pull out some moments of high drama when called upon to do so.
Hugh Grant actually does the most convincing job of acting. His old pansy stage director with his nicotine-yellowed fingers made me squirm; a simply awful person.
There are two splendid performances by Nicola Pagett and Carol Drinkwater as the two fading beauties in the troupe of actors; the former a love-sick tragedienne and the latter a hopeless, sex-starved drunk. And Peter Firth returns to the big screen in a quietly humorous and yet pathetic stage manager, Bunny. In his subtle way Firth steals the show whenever he's on screen.
No, this is not a warm-hearted comedy. It is a nasty tale with a heart of latex.
Having said all that it's worth seeing as an oddity. I could not give it less than 5 stars because the over-all quality of the production and performances is so very high. It's just Beryl Bainbridge's dark, sad story that leaves a pall. Maybe, in time, I will come to view this as some kind of minor masterpiece, but I doubt it.
A very odd viewing experience. No wonder it flopped in America. This kind of socialist, down-trodden banging-on doesn't even get off the ground in a free society.
I didn't know what to expect from Mike Newell. He's made films of all genres and has recently made the Hollywood set with The Prince of Persia, though it was a bit of a flop, but still...
I liked his Enchanted April a great deal and Four Weddings and a Funeral had its charms and was very mainstream. So I had hopes of liking An Awfully Big Adventure as well. I was also curious to see the only film adaptation of a Beryl Bainbridge novel. I wasn't prepared for An Awfully Big Adventure being so strange and just plain weird.
This film boasts a splendid cast of actors, many of them long past their primes but then so are most of the characters in the movie.
The technical credits, music, cinematography and script are fine, the acting, as stated, is superb, but this is one of the most depressing films I've ever seen. The story is neurotic, childish and yet strangely touching, chock-full of Catholic suffering and self-flagellation.
The characters are drawn beautifully and the overall point of the story is well-taken, the devastation of war on human psyches and all that, but the ultimate point of the story, incest, is a shocking and seemingly irrelevant side swipe that threw this viewer's mind off center.
I waited for something deep to be revealed but the film simply stops with the sudden incest angle.
It's your basic sordid tale of a troupe of has-beens on their last legs in a Liverpool theatre. The young girl, Stella, is extremely odd and doesn't seem to possess a shred of innocence that I think we were supposed to think she possessed. She's naïve to be sure and inexperienced but innocent, no. And fantasy life borders on the psychotic. I have no doubt she ended up either a nun or a whore.
Georgina Cates gives a pretty great performance though she's very difficult to understand more often than not and I have been watching British/Irish/Scotch films for years. She trips over many of her lines in a self-conscious way, part of her character perhaps.
Alan Rickman is not quite as mush-mouthed as he usually is but I still don't understand the wild passion of his deathless legions of fans. I find him very boring most of the time, but he can pull out some moments of high drama when called upon to do so.
Hugh Grant actually does the most convincing job of acting. His old pansy stage director with his nicotine-yellowed fingers made me squirm; a simply awful person.
There are two splendid performances by Nicola Pagett and Carol Drinkwater as the two fading beauties in the troupe of actors; the former a love-sick tragedienne and the latter a hopeless, sex-starved drunk. And Peter Firth returns to the big screen in a quietly humorous and yet pathetic stage manager, Bunny. In his subtle way Firth steals the show whenever he's on screen.
No, this is not a warm-hearted comedy. It is a nasty tale with a heart of latex.
Having said all that it's worth seeing as an oddity. I could not give it less than 5 stars because the over-all quality of the production and performances is so very high. It's just Beryl Bainbridge's dark, sad story that leaves a pall. Maybe, in time, I will come to view this as some kind of minor masterpiece, but I doubt it.
A very odd viewing experience. No wonder it flopped in America. This kind of socialist, down-trodden banging-on doesn't even get off the ground in a free society.