Best movie of this year hands down!

Admirable film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Ellie Harris (Hayley Atwell) reluctantly returns to her sister Kate who is struggling financially with her retirement home Woodlane. Ellie is saving up to go on a trip with her friends. The home is losing staff and residents due to four particularly opinionated residents singer-dancer Georgia (Vanessa Redgrave), pianist Donald (Joss Ackland), sisters Hazel (Imelda Staunton) and Heather (Brenda Fricker). Ellie befriends lonely dying Alice and her death hits her hard. Ellie's mother has a stroke and Kate has to go to take care of her. While everyone is away, Ellie is left alone in charge with four grumpy residents.The early death of Alice is a mistake. She represents the heart of the movie. The story feels like it has to restart after her death. It takes awhile to recover the heart. The comedic turns from the four veteran actors feel clunky. Their emotional drama feels perfunctory. Alice has a great line and should die later on to jump-start the climax. These are great actors and they have some drama to play out. However it's all rather structured and unsurprising.

This was an enjoyable story. I get it...the plot direction and outcome, but the editing and rapid ending left me with the feeling that about ten minutes of tying up story lines was left out. The final scene was a mess. In the scene prior, it's snowing, freezing and cold outside at Christmas, then in the final scene, the nursing home owner returns home and its Suddenly SPRING but with orange colored leaves...suggesting Fall to our visual cues. The editing choices describing the time span were peculiar. The film leaves us with the assumption that the home was "saved", more clients arrived who liked living there, and equilibrium returned. Another question unanswered was how did the paintings and drawings arrive at the Pub? So much energy was devoted on two or three occasions to find out where Redgrave's character wandered off to. Why wouldn't she just tell someone she's gone to the Pub? The actors delivered, but I'll have to go to the book for an understanding of what went on at the end. The answers are no doubt on some cutting room floor.

This was one of those stories where you got a hunch about the direction in which it was heading within 10 minutes of the start, and your hunch was never proved wrong. Maybe a few wobbles, but nevertheless, it remained on track throughout. So this was why I could sit back and notice every tiny detail cropping up, and I can very well claim that the execution was near faultless. So, what the hell if the story's predictable ? There's something beyond plot that impresses you in a movie and this one came out in flying colors there. The lines were perfect and they were delivered with just the right punch. The four "hardcores" let their character transformation seep in, in just the right measures, and hence the ride never seemed jerky. The editing was so crisp that just when you started seeing the danger signal and was anxious lest the movie might start dragging, the story went on to the next step. At just the right time. The tears and sentiments just stopped short at the point where you might feel it might overflow. In all, I think they ran the risk of boring the audience by taking on a story that went on a monotonic path and being well aware of this, they left nothing unturned to nullify that risk. But, it's the message behind the movie that moved me the most. For those who dread the days when they would grow old and begin to drag their dysfunctional existence, this was the movie to watch. Life does not give us the cold shoulders once we start aging, it's we who choose to go into a selfish cocoon at this time of the day ---this was a message that could do with a lot of repeating. Thus, to conclude, the bottom line is that ---Dear Mr. Prospective Viewer, please do not go into this movie expecting something vigorously original, just sit back and try to listen to what the movie has to offer: there's pieces of information there that might just come out handy.

I have just seen How About You at its U.S. premiere as part of the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Although there are, as we've grown to expect, beautifully judged performances from Joss Ackland, Brenda Fricker, Imelda Staunton and Vanessa Redgrave, to say nothing of the up-and-coming younger actors, the highlight for me was the performance of Irish actress Joan O'Hara, whom I did not know. Ms O'Hara gave us the most beautiful, sensitive, intelligent face of a very mature woman I have ever seen, a face which the camera seemed to caress in closeup. I was saddened to learn that Joan O'Hara herself died in July 2007 and this may have been her final performance.