Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

An absolute waste of money

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is the 1930s, and London gadabout Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale) has just been orphaned. With no options or ambition (except to experience life and become a writer), she goes to live in the country with distant relatives. Upon arriving at the dilapidated farm, she finds its inhabitants are all gloomy, filthy, wretched oafs, so naturally she sets about improving their lives.This basic plot has been done before, most notably in "Amelie," but this BBC movie is terrible. There's no humor, the characters are all off-putting, and the changes Flora brings about - including turning a spaced-out naïf into a debutante, a deranged hermit into a fine lady, and a bumbling farm hand into a Hollywood star - are completely unbelievable. As Flora, Beckinsale is flat and tiresome and the relatives are reduced to English hillbillies. This is a tedious and unappealing movie.

This is Kate Beckinsale back when she acted instead of did action movies for big bucks. Although I wish they hadn't left out some of the characters and changed some things around from the original book, this movie kept the whacky spirit of Stella Gibbon's novel.For instance, in the novel there were a host of other Starkadders being mistreated by Aunt Ada Doom who Flora helps, Rinnit marries the author Mr. Mybug (Myerburg!) played by Stephen Frye, not Ruben, and the farm isn't actually in bad shape. Ruben has been cooking the books he shows to Aunt Ada so that he can use the money to improve the farm.I have only been able to get my hands on one of the two sequel novels that Stella Gibbons wrote about these same characters, Conference at Cold Comfort Farm and it is not quite as good. But you do get to find out what happened to some of the characters after WWII. Someday I hope to get a copy of Christmas at cold comfort farm to read.Whacky good fun and I like the message that people should follow their own dream (even nutjob religious maniac Cousin Amos, brilliantly played by Sir Ian McKellan) rather than be a slave to a tyrant. It is unrealistic that Aunt Ada can be redeemed so easily but I like the way she was played, as having an epiphany when the American film Czar Mr. Neck asks her if the nasty thing in the woodshed saw her.Excellent movie all around.

"Child, child. If you come to this doomed 'ouse, what is there to save you?"- Judith Starkadder in COLD COMFORT FARM.The "child" in question is the lone offspring of one Robert Poste (deceased) and, as we are soon to discover, Poste's progeny, Flora, is hardly one in need of saving. Orphaned in her budding womanhood, nettled by the golden orb of an unrealized literary career, Flora strikes out from the discerning (or snobbish) urban sophistication of London ( leaving behind her good friend Mary and Mary's invaluable manservant, Sneller) and heads for the bucolic splendor of the Sussex countryside to lodge with her relatives, the Starkadders, and find herself.She finds instead: a muck-begrimed tumbledown estate wherein resides a ready-for- Hollywood womanizer (Cousin Seth), an estate-coveting farmer (Cousin Reuben), a daffy romantic (Cousin Elfine), a too-loving mother (Cousin Judith), a 'vengeful god', proselytizing father (Cousin Amos), and an iron-willed matriarch (Greataunt Ada Doom). There's also a smattering of Lambsbreath (Adam) and a smidgen of Hawk-Monitor (Dick).Inside the Starkadder fold Flora encounters a resistance to dish washing modernity (the twig versus the hand mop); the rumor of an unmentionable misdeed once perpetrated against her father; the oft-cited permanence of the Starkadders on their environs; and the matriarch's frequently mentioned trauma after having witnessed a particularly odious occurrence inside the outdoor log pile storage facility ("...something nasty in the woodshed"). Undaunted, Flora presents a cool brow and an almost impervious demeanor plus an extremely persuasive power to influence. Within COLD COMFORT FARM, where high fashion and applied scientific reasoning smash headlong into arrested sociological development and stunted personal/ familial growth, tear-inducing laughter is the order of the day.As mentioned in the comments of others, Ms. Beckinsale, clad in her natty period togs and radiating a winsome, unflappable aura (while also projecting a strangely prepubescent vibe), hasn't had as good a role since Flora. Meanwhile, those master thespians, Freddie Jones, Ian McKellan, and the inimitable Eileen Atkins nearly go mad with delight as they burrow gleefully into their characters. Rufus Sewell's Seth smolders hilariously while Stephen Fry's Mybug, "soaked in nature's fecund blessing", blusters uproariously. This sort of comedy of manners and cultural collision required an intelligent, perceptive and witty director. John Schlesinger (DARLING, 1965) fit the bill gloriously.

This movie is listed as a comedy genre. However, aside from the old matriarch beating everybody with a newspaper, I did not find one funny scene to laugh at.I won't criticize the acting because the performers do a fine job in their acting abilities. But, the story is unbelievable by American contemporary standards. I can't conceive of any American family which would relegate themselves to such constant misery by living on a farm what is falling apart. The characters would have left the farm for the city long ago and "Robert Poste's child" would have showed up to a half-empty farm. Likewise, the characters are too dirty living. Unwashed faces, dirty clothes never cleaned all make for an interesting scene if it were a war movie with the people in the mud in combat. But, for day to day living it seems that even in the 1920s people cleaned their bodies and clothes.Well, as Flora Poste flies off into the sunset in an open cockpit plane, "All's well that ends well."I think this "story" would turn out better if it were a stage play rather than a movie. It has stage possibilities! The characters' personalities lend themselves to providing a good stage casting.Larry from Illinois