An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)

Some more Rickman, please...

Like others have said, I was surprised that it was not a light-hearted comedy and disappointed that Alan Rickman's character doesn't arrive until halfway through; but it was wonderfully cast and though very disturbing, I feel it needs to watched again. January 18, 2008

A very quiet classic.

I've loved this movie for years, and bought the DVD as soon as it was released. As other reviewers have said, the cover copy is completely misleading. It's a tragedy of sad, warped lives, with bits of humor, some of it black, thrown into the mix. To get an idea of Georgina Cates's amazing versatility, I recommend Clay Pigeons. December 15, 2007

An Awfully Big Role for Rickman, which he handles extraordinarily well

Eager for more Alan Rickman (Die Hard, AHarry Potter 1-5) goodness, I watched An Awfully Big Adventure.

Unfortunately, even though Alan Rickman gets top billing for this picture, he doesn't appear in it until a good half an hour into it. When he does, Rickman commands the stage (literally and as part of the movie's plot). There is one particular look that Rickman shoots Hugh Grant's character that alone makes it worth watching the rest of the two-hour movie. Rickman's performance never falls below excellence and his portrayal of Hook is mesmerizing (and the bits that we see of his stage role are more powerful than even when Dustin Hoffman played the famous pirate in Hook.

Georgina Cates' first major movie performance is impressive because she is able to match Rickman's intensity and bring about pure innocence to her character. Furthermore, at 20, she looks much younger than her 16-year-old character.

Mike Newell's direction is impressive in this film. And the costumes are authentic for the period.

Seeing the backstage of the late 1940s theater makes for an interesting drama, but more so makes the revelation more plausible, although it is highly predictable and as Dickensian as it is soap operaish. All, in all, a must-see film for anyone who has ever fallen under Rickman's spell. November 21, 2007

Roar Of The Greasepaint, Smell Of The Crowd

Here is a film that enthusiastically supports the negative stereotypes of "theatre people" cherished by hod carriers, gravediggers, truck mechanics, and short order cooks. It concerns a bottom of the barrel local stage company in post-war Liverpool, which functions as a repository of wretched refuse unable to find work in better venues. Virtually every despised group is represented; the troupe is teeming with homosexuals, alcoholics, cruel narcissists, manipulative wretches, and those guilty of sex crimes involving minors both male and female. We do not find people to like in this film, we only find people to pity - like Bunny, portrayed brilliantly by Peter Firth - and Stella, the tragically damaged and clueless protagonist. Georgina Cates is thoroughly convincing as Stella, yet another young girl who flees a harsh reality for the theatre's comforting deceptions.

I was amazed to discover that the trailer for this movie presented it as a comedy - Hamlet is funnier. Even the illusion of happiness - the theatre's stock and trade - is missing. What we have instead is a world where people play roles without knowing it, and are emotionally mugged in the process. The ringleader of this horror show is Meredith Potter; Hugh Grant is exceptionally good. (This movie was made before Grant found his niche as an affable cad and is certainly his best bit of acting ever.) Potter is the apogee of upper class English entitlement gone to seed; he is clever, thoroughly decadent, lacking in anything remotely resembling a conscience, and pathetic - though his cruelty makes it impossible for us to scrape together a farthing of empathy, our revulsion prohibits it.

The arrival of Alan Rickman - a consistently wonderful actor - as O'Hara, would seems to signal a battle of titans - admirable versus contemptible. And while watching Rickman play Captain Hook is pure delight, his O'Hara skirts around Potter and drifts off into a somewhat, if not very, bizarre backstory involving Stella's shadowy past. This derails the film and sends it off in a murky direction since it was never a who-done-it or a psychological thriller. O'Hara's connection to Stella and her mother may give us an "aha" moment - but ultimately it's a distraction because it doesn't inform what's happened up to that point. O'Hara has a grim realization that puts him in a very difficult position. But in the final analysis, Stella is still a girl "abandoned" by her mother and raised by relatives who trades the sadness of real life and for the sadness of fantasy life.

Good cinematography, good acting, poor pacing, and sloppy scripting. Would have been far more interesting to see how a loathsome creature like Potter might create great theatre through the dynamic tension between himself and a range of competing personalities cut from finer cloth. October 7, 2007

Hugh Grant Acts, Shock Horror!

In the days before Hugh Grant became a romantic comedy icon, it turns out that he could act, and act he does in this marvellous little vignette period-piece. Here he plays an effete theater director with a penchant for picking up men and then discarding them in the cruellest possible manner. He has assembled, for a short repertory season in the Liverpool of 1957, a cast of has-beens, alcoholics, and other assorted misfits, including the naif fourtnee-year-old Stella who dreams of becoming a posh starlet.

The supporting cast all turn in solid performances, but what really brings the film alive is when Alan Rickman steps into the story about one-third of the way in. This is Rickman in his prime: electrifying, nuanced, darkly compelling yet subtly self-mocking at the same time. It is exceedingly difficult for an actor to play an actor, because the "visible ham" element can too easily become, accidentally, "risible ham." The entire cast generally manage to pull off this balancing act par excellence, but Rickman does it best of all. He exudes sexuality even when dressed as Captain Hook in the pantomime version of Peter Pan. It's no surprise that several of the ladies of the cast would like to rekindle old acquaintances.

But the Rickman character's tragic secret (he believes he has a son, born to him many years before by a woman he knew only as Stella Maris) turns Greek-tragedy like into his denouement. The naif Stella, whom he seduces almost instantly because he is drawn to her by some alchemical attraction, turns out to be... none other than his daughter. Struck by this Oedipal twist, Rickman puts in a performance that needs to be watched several times over to be fully appreciated. In genuine grief and shock, his actor character takes recourse to cliched dramatic gesture. At first I felt Rickman had missed the mark, but after re-watching the scene in question three times I came to appreciate exactly the effect he achieves. The net result is to lend a painful pathos to his resultant demise by accidental drowning.

So for anyone looking for a twisted version of Oedipus Rex set in post-war Britain, with all the class consciousness and stultifying conventions of the time here subverted in a most enjoyable manner, this awfully small adventure yields a big reward.

September 27, 2007

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