Hampstead

Seen at the Roxy Cinema,Nowra NSW

Cecil says: This film was awful, in spite of its excellent cast.

We had put off going because we had a hunch and sadly all our fears were well-founded. And in the end, it was the film that was starting just as we got to the cinema on a Sunday morning, so we went for it anyway.

I’m trying to find some redeeming features to talk about: the only character who felt remotely believable was Diane Keaton’s son: slightly roguish, fairly posh son who pops round to his Mum’s Hampstead flat unannounced, gets breakfast and probes into her private life.

For the rest, the characters felt more like the fantasies so many second-rate American writers have of what it is to be English (or even Irish in Brendan Gleeson’s case): somehow the men are always debonair, middle-aged and wealthy, usually with a posh accent, or are stone-the-crows cor blimey guv Cockneys. Like Americans never came across Estuary English or just an average Joe or Jill?

This film felt like the sort of script a young tourist might write after her first visit to London. She discovered some of the cute nooks and crannies of Hampstead and just had to let everyone in on her ‘discoveries’ (I say ‘her’, but actually I think it was written by a man); she got the right bus route, pointed out the Marx grave in the cemetery (Highgate of course), even calculated more or less how far it was from Hampstead to Camden, but then made it unreal with the ridiculously ditzy Diane Keaton character, the caricature accountant, and then the Gleeson character: based on a real person, but so so badly- developed (he’d say and do things that were just not what a guy like that would do: he became a kind of goofy American caricature). Even his perfect veggie patch in amongst the trees felt unbelievable – we know how hard it is to grow vegetables in ground that get little sunlight, and his shack was hidden away in the depths of the Hampstead Heath trees.

I could go on and on picking holes in this film but why rack my brain to pick it apart anymore.

Best forgotten.

Stars? Zero or maybe 0.5…

Bea says: Yes, complete disappointment.  

As Cecil says, clearly written by someone who has visited London and fallen in love with it (understandable – I did the same).  But the writer would have been better writing about someone visiting London and falling in love with it, rather than trying to write about two mature “loveable eccentrics” meeting each other in Hampstead.  

The characters were unbelievable despite apparently being based on real people, the plot was unbelievable, and the clichés were jarring.  Keaton and Gleeson are both capable of much more, although I do tire of Keaton’s constant Annie Hall reprisal.  The fact that they couldn’t save it showed how bad the script was. 

I was flabbergasted that this actually got made, released, and was on a quite a widespread cinema run at the time we saw it.  This may work as a telemovie on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but in general – avoid.

*

Ill Manors

Bea says:  I had read a review of Ill Manors earlier in the day we decided to go and see it, and nearly put Cecil off by telling him there was lots of rap music in it - not his favourite! However, the music was great throughout - not that aggressive, misogynist rap I don't like either, but thoughtful rap, of the ilk of groups like Public Enemy (and I am showing my age here!). There was also a spellbinding spoken word scene ("Pity the plight of young men") filmed as an open-mike piece in a London pub which just rooted me to the spot and has stayed with me since.

This sad, sad story of the descent into drugs, violence and prostitution of so many young people on the London estates was harrowing to watch, but just about avoided bleakness by following the personal stories of the characters, and letting us see who got out, and how.

Director and writer Ben Drew apparently struggled to make this film, about his real life experiences growing up in London, and I am glad he stuck with it - someone to watch.
***

Cecil says: Riz Ahmed is becoming the Bill Nighy of the ethnic minority acting role - he seems to be in nearly every film we see these days - or is that more a reflection of the type of film we go and see? In any case he's good, as are the other actors, many of whom I gather from Wikipedia were basically East End friends of the director, so they knew the roles they were playing.

As Bea says, when I heard the film would be backed by virtually constant rap music, I almost turned the car round and drove home, but actually I was gripped from the outset and enjoyed the soundtrack - if you can use the word 'enjoy' about anything in this film.

If you want a cheery, happy-go-lucky film, Ill Manors is not for you. It is almost unbearably bleak, with some scenes making me grimace at how horrific they were, and how believable they were.

And in addition to liking the soundtrack, I was amazed that - on the whole - I managed to follow the dialogue of 'street' slang; I guess I might have struggled more if this had been set in LA or New York, but London is familiar enough and I couldn't help wondering how many incidents and characters like these I had walked past over the years without having any idea of them.

Good film? Yes, definitely.  But there were only 4 of us sitting in Stockton-on-Tees multiplex. Hmmm, more suited to the Tyneside Cinema or Gala in Durham I'd have thought.

***.5