Overrated , except for Dench and Guest

I never even knew this film was 'rated'. I thought it was completely pointless. Good acting can not create a point. I thought some of the scenes about the bombing and war time hardship were just thrown in completely randomly and I must say that the characters were not develeoped at all adequately.

Basically if someone told you the story/narrative - you would say: 'Err...so what?'

And i doubt anyone would remember any of these charcters for very long.

Basically - What was the point of this movie?

IF it was meant to be a comedy there should have been more laughs. If it was meant to be a drama; there should have been more pivotal moments and some depth to the characters. If it was supposed to be comedy drama; it needed to be good.

Frankly the film was none of the above.

Making good films is certainly not easy. But I do wish the people behind them WOULD try harder. Especially as they are not expected to make any money whatsoever at the box office; therefore why not put the effort into actually making a good film?*

By way of explanation I think our American cousins shuold know something about the British film industry. It is that - and I don't know about this film in particular - funding for films is not given with any pretence that the film will make a profit. It is given either/or both as a result of a well known tax dodge - whereby investment in films can be used by companies greatly to their tax advantage. And secondly - the national lottery has more money than it knows what to do with (it literrally has a severe backlog of unspent funds) and thus chucks money at all sorts of films - that statistically have about as much chance of success at the box office as zero divided by a million.

The result being that for the last ten years no one in the British film industry has had their efforts exposed to commercial success. And the plentiful supply of funding has seemingly resulted in a complacncy behind these films.

End result: Mediocrity.

We may have good actors. But anyone with any talent in production/writing is soon off to America. And so they should.

Ooh - that turned into a bit of a rant!
Oh and by the way: some films that are supposedly british like James Bond or Harry Potter are not really british as they are funded by American FIlm companies and intended for an American audience. Though many of them do come here for the same tax advantages as mentioned above.

Oh and p.s. - I know Full Monty made money. But just check out the films that are British and see how well they do. Also ask yourself how many times you have seen a British film in teh cinema; or even when the lsat time a film like Mrs Henderson was actually shown in your local cinema?