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.

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. This results in humorous scene in which Keith has hired an "actress" to model some lingerie for him, as birthday present and/or "one last kick at the can". When others read to him in bed, his preference is a lingerie mail-order catalogue. Cliched, but still amusing. For Izzie, the last indignity is having to wear "nappies", and the issue of euthanasia is a sub-plot throughout.

Most of the story centers around Izzie, his near-alcoholic daughter Dee, who runs the old-folks home, and her half-black son Keith, who she claims could have been a doctor, lawyer, or rock-star, but instead 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.

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......

An entertaining and thought-provoking film, its dark humour is the antithesis of politically correct mainstream Hollywood movies. All the characters are distinctive in their own quirky way, but Leyland O'Brien gives a particularly eye-catching performance as a confused but determined teenager. The dramatic denouement is unexpected and effective.

This is an excellent film: 'Happiness' meets 'East is East'. The humour comes not from the fact that the setting is a jewish old folks home, because they are old people like old people anywhere, but from the fact that these particular characters talk about what they really think and feel in a wonderfully direct way.

Ron Moody is predictably moving as Izzie Goldberg, the grandfather who finds his memories of former glory-days unbearable now that he is incontinent and looking forward to a painful death. The minor comic characters are marvellous: especially the nurse who bizarrely deprives the old folks of their daily milk ration.

For me the best performance comes from the doctor, played by John Cunningham. His lines, some of the best in this superb script, are performed with cut-glass comic delivery. And that deadpan delivery is an absolute must for this genre. The story may be tragic but the delivery achieves the almost painful comic undertone that distinguishes dark arthouse comedy from mainstream. It's a must-see!