Reviews

I, like most people, thought twice about spending a good few hours of my life watching an old man fall in love with a teenager, but my respect for O'Toole and a free ticket voucher at the Denver Film Festival were more than enough to motivate me to see the film. Had I not gone, I would have made a serious mistake. O'Toole's performance is as good as anything he's done, and the whispers about Oscars might just have something behind them. Somehow, Roger Michell directed this film so beautifully that nothing that occurred between Maurie and Jessie seemed morally ambiguous whatsoever. Maybe it was the pairing of scenes with poppy Corinne Bailey Rae music that made it seem so natural, but I strongly suspect otherwise. O'Toole, paired with a beautiful performance by virtual unknown Jodie Whittaker, takes us into a world that disregards social boundaries and replaces them with raw human emotion and understanding. Though O'Toole's performance captivates the Oscar attention of anyone who sees the film, the supporting role played by Leslie Phillips was essential to the film's success. The relationship between Phillips and O'Toole's character had the entire theater laughing just seconds into the film. Overall, a cast of entirely endearing characters and knockout performances by O'Toole, Phillips, and Whittaker make Venus one of the best films I've seen in 2006.

I just came from an advanced screening of the film and it was barely short of hilarious. Some overly ambitious people who take themselves too seriously regarding politics may not have found the film intellectually stimulating or perhaps even found it offensive, but as a comedian, I have to say that there are very few boundaries as long as the decision made gets a laugh. Anyone who thought this film was going to take a serious stance on any sort of political issue must not have seen the trailer- if they had (and were as intelligent as they claimed to be), they would have gone in with a different expectation and thus probably enjoyed it to some degree. This film is an important thing for a media that has been taking itself a little too seriously lately.