Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

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 picked up this movie to watch based on a reviewers comment on the back cover that this is a comedy thus I was disappointed. It is not a comedy... it is a drama and a rather depressing one at that. Although there is good acting in it. Had I been prepared to watch a drama, I would have liked it better. It is not predictable like most Hollywood movies and it shows the quirkier side of people. I think this is the first time I have seen Hugh Grant portray a rather mean spirited character as he usually plays more likable roles. I think he acted it very well as did Alan Rickman... but they are both are great actors, thus no surprise.Twist at end.

Shame on all of those who gave most of the plot away. This is a worthwhile film, one I have seen at least twice and will watch any time it is on. True, I am a fan of Alan Rickman, but it goes beyond that. As a slice of British theatre life it is up there with "The Dresser" and is about as depressing. A romp it is not, but so what? Was it marketed badly? Yes, perhaps. But it is well acted, tightly directed and even fun to watch at times. It doesn't end well, but as Brad Pitt said in character in "The Devil's Own" ... "this isn't an American story." Hooray for that.As a character study of several people, it is about as good as it gets, although I might want a little more depth, especially on Rickman's character. He is gentlemen enough to be destroyed by what he does in the end and it enobles his character. I enjoyed watching Hugh Grant, who is a delightful man in person and not quite the twit he often plays, cast against type as a nasty, bitchy queen. Yeah, he can act. So what if they pay him a lot of money to be himself, more or less, most of the time? When pressed, he can deliver.If you like Grant and Rickman, you can't go wrong. If you like dark stories of behind-the-scenes theatre life, this is a good 'un for you. And young Ms. Cates, married to Skeet Ulrich gives a great performance, even if she had to lie her way into the part.

I've been curious about this movie for a long time. I finally saw it on IFC.It was great! In this age of VERY expensive, predictable, committee-approved "art", I was relieved to watch this story unfold. Although I suspected early on about the relationship between Cates and Rickman's characters, it's execution was much better than the usual pap that pretends to be a surprise or twist.Or even interesting.The real twists in this story, was its own mirror of the real human forces and decisions that keep some of the sweetest, and unfortunately, worst stories going on. The twists were the tiny reasons why such things, sometimes painful and abhorrent to our collective cultural sense of what's right and decent in a society, to continue within it.The hypocrisy of denying that these dark parts of ourselves exist often cause them to continue. Often times, the self-appointed moral-police of our culture make this inevitable in their pursuit of human frailty, the aftermath of its hunt, and the white-washing of the events (and non-events) they discovered.No character represented total evil, good, decadence or purity, including Stella. She had as much (subtle) emotional weaponry with her, as she had emotional scars.Many Americans don't like, or have been trained (over time) to not have patience for such imperfect main-characters in fiction anymore. The one-dimensional, mass-marketed character, is the norm here now.That's sad. Because of that, this movie (and others like it) didn't do very well here.Having this story take place within the entertainment industry is an excellent way of displaying so much of the world's human tragedy AND stupidity being covered up by some people's treachery, some people's nobility, or a combination of both.And even at the end of this tale, all of the stage crew, like life itself, executed their own particular versions of the adage, "The show must go on."No perfect hollywood story here, with it's base and stupid doling out of come-uppance of everyone's flaws...or Evil.