Tortoise in Love

This film is delightful and humorous. It is about people and their Relationships. Even the most beautiful people do not have an easy time When they are in love.

The boy with the love of aircraft gives a splendid performance of a sad boy neglected by his father but supported by the estate workers.

This is a gentle film and beautifully photographed. It is homage to the goodness of people, the ingeniousness of the rural community and so many things good about England that "commercial" filmmakers neglect to tell us about.

It is a must for viewing by every rural film society and likely to Become a perennial favorite.

Having heard the story about the making of the film (a community project)and the relative success I was full of anticipation and wanted to enjoy it. Sadly, while it starts well, by about ten minutes in it very much feels like a film made by two different groups of people professionals and amateurs.

The settings and locations are great and make pleasant viewing, the cinematography is lovely and the sound track fitting, however the script is truly lame and the story paper thin with no character development even attempted. As a viewer I was left with the sense that the film had been built around a few key scenes / jokes which while mildly amusing simply aren't enough to carry an hour and a half, and that therefore the script writer was either too lazy or too arrogant to care.

The two leads and the young boy all look good on screen and do a reasonable job with the terribly weak material and some clunking dialogue "your lips are a rocket and mine are the landing station" The rest of the acting is split and the experience/talent of the likes of Stephen Elder, Ivan Kaye, Lesley Staples and Mike Kemp only serves to accentuate the weaknesses of some of the other actors who display everything from just plain ineptness on screen to wild over acting, random gesticulation and weird accents.

It's a film version of an am-dram performance and like am dram performances it's really only of interest if you are in it or know someone who is.

If you like Boulting Brothers, London Bridge, Two Lions, or Ealing comedies of the 1950s (and it is probably my favourite genre) then you will like this - it has much of the same sensibilities and is in the same lineage.

Other reviewers have slammed this with 1s or 2s, or overpraised it with 10s - I'm glad I didn't read them before I saw Tortoise in Love as this is, like most romantic comedies, neither exceptionally good and certainly not exceptionally bad. The film is fun and even funny - it is a very British take on love - as the hero cannot express his feelings for the Polish au-pair. All set in a world full of Thomas Hardy accents, gorgeous Georgian architecture, and rolling fields it is a very easy watch. It's all a little too fake and perfect for the real modern Britain - and it looks implausibly false in many, many ways.

But, the script was fun.

All in all, nowhere near as bad as some as suggesting - but it is a little too prissy, rather than charming, to really fly...

Tom mitchelson is "Thomas, the gardener" for a fancy estate. When the new polish governess (alice zawadzki) arrives to look after young Harry, she is quite the beauty. Thomas is quite taken with her. This one is a silly, fun love story, with lots of quirky, real people. Grandma is fun, but off her rocker. And she wants to have a festival like the good ol' days. Stand back! Lots of running gags in this one. Plain, simple fun. Fair amount of laughs. Jokes about dating. Jokes about married life. Moves pretty slowly.. will Tom ever get together with the governess? It's okay. Probably meant for a younger audience? Written and directed by Guy Browning. This is the first, and only film written by, or directed by him.

This is a gentle comedy of village life, with some good lines. A young man falls in love with a Polish visitor and struggles to find a way to make himself understood.

Unlike Calendar Girls and Brassed Off, the film doesn't manage to develop a dark side to act as a counterpoint to the courting couple, which means that it can seem a bit insubstantial.

The lead character is a dead ringer for Hugh Grant, and there are some good supporting performances from unknowns.

The soundtrack is good and the settings are very beautiful. I loved the cameo from the Red Arrows.

This the kind of film Richard Curtis would make on a low budget.