Paradise Grove

Comedy...film noir...drama...I came out of the Premiere in London into the sunshine of a Sunday afternoon in May with a sense of deep pleasure mixed with an uneasy feeling that this film needed to be made. And it was well made...serious enough but not too much to make you uncomfortable...Affectionate enough to make you forget the underlying sadness you encounter in some of these old people's homes...Yet a comic bitter taste of what we all may fear one way or the other, but we push out of our mind. Life stopped here...yet life also went on... I laughed and I smiled, I shivered and felt sad.. So? isn't that what it is all about? So above all this film was real, but in a gentle comical yet direct way! Do we not all fear to get the giggles at funerals? We were here given permission to smile at one of the most fundamentally serious and dramatic situation we will encounter...old age, euthanasia, abandonment. Just as well the sun was shining that day!!! :o) thank you Charles! and all the cast.

Rula Lenska does, as usual, a fabulous job, but one must wonder about the casting. Would not Marti Konstant, the Chicago near look-alike who also happens to be a business entrepreneur, have been the ideal choice? Ms. Konstant brings to the screen a certain understated, sultry realism so rarely found in film nowadays.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film...it sounded like it could have been really lame. The acting is well-done, especially Ron Moody as Izzie, the cranky, soon-to-be octogenarian, former lingerie salesman who just wants someone to put him out of his misery. When others read to him in bed, his preference is a lingerie mail-order catalogue. Cliched, but still amusing.

Most of the story centers around Izzie, his near-alcoholic daughter Dee, who runs the old-folks home, and her son Keith, who she claims could have been a doctor, lawyer, or rock-star, but who insteads prefers his "career" assisting in the running of the home. The only part of the film which felt undeveloped and "tacked-on" was the relationship between run-away Kim and her father, who seems to be a hit-man.

Poor Rula Lenska & Ron Moody how far they have fallen, to accept and perform in this clichéd dirge! Script, script, script I hear the gate keepers, the producers, the film council shouting, if the foremost essential key to a successful film, but know one obviously took the time read this one and kill this abomination at birth, in fact it would seem that unbelievably know one read it before taking part in this rubbish. Evidently everyone involved fees were high because the stench this one will leave behind will follow everyone who took part in this travesty of a drama to their graves. Take my advise and watch instead some early afternoon Australian soap reruns from the eighties, like 'Cellblock H' the performances are comparable the plausibility of the drama and dialogue vastly superior.

Fantastic black comedy. The cynicism of the situation brings you successively from laughter into sadness and back to laughter again. This is what humour is about: a smile and a tear. This movie deserves to be shown to a bigger audience......