Grow Your Own

I watched the DVD of this, basically because that's how i watch movies. I wondered at the start if I had made a mistake and was going to rue the decision to buy it, but no, things livened up a bit, the comedy was subtle and the acting was stock UK standard - sometimes too good for its own good, many viewers missing the sublety. I think today we are so saturated with 'blockbuster' and 'drama' that when we see characters who seem to be not acting, we just think that they're doing badly. I've done that myself. However, although I think that Philip Jackson, who is one of my favourites, was a predictable casting, the situation was ultimately sorted in the typical British no-fuss method of side-stepping the unpleasantness and dealing to him. I liked it, no apologies for that. I'll probably watch it again.

While it's not exactly a film that is going to set the world on fire with it's originality, "Grow Your Own" is a perfectly OK drama/comedy. (Note, it is a drama/comedy rather than a comedy/drama. There is a difference.)

The trailer would have you believe that "Grow Your Own" is a film concerned with British eccentrics, stuck in their ways, perturbed by the influence of foreigners on the little piece of England they call the Allotment. Er... Actually that is exactly what it is about (clichés ahoy!), but it is the sometimes very tragic human stories behind the clichés that make "Grow Your Own" interesting enough.

The cast is made up of the same faces that are always turning up in British films. (Philip Jackson, Eddie Marsan, John Henshaw, Olivia Colman, Omid Djalili, et al.) All of them perfectly, and probably obviously, cast.

Not world breaking, but a perfectly amiable film for a quiet afternoon at the cinema. Yes, it is another, I'm assuming, lottery funded British movie of no interest to anybody outside of the British Isles, but give it a go. You might like it.

Wow! A genuinely funny and moving film that lingered in my head for days. Probably the most unsexy list of ingredients to make a movie from - gardening, immigration, telephone masts - but it links all these plots with an amazing cast of characters who it is impossible not to care for. It's a bit like Little Miss Sunshine - why should a road movie about a dysfunctional family on their way to a beauty pageant work? - because you care about every single one of them and the same thing happens here. Rather than laying the politics of immigration on with a trowel the writing and directing insinuate it throughout the stories. A great piece of British Indie Cinema - It left me with that feeling you get after an impromptu warm summer evening sitting outside the pub.

I saw a preview of this and absolutely loved it. It was very funny (the scene where the cranky old men test out the ring tones for instance is a classic) and touching. I loved the fact that it had none of the usual faces that you see in Britcoms. I didn't recognise anyone in it apart from Benny Wong - who was amazing in this - and the very funny girl from Hot Fuzz, who was just as funny in this. I love the fact that it keeps about ten different stories rolling along. I also loved all the gardening stuff. It reminded me of The Secret Garden and it gave the whole thing a bit of poetry and beauty that you just don't see in films about working class people normally.

I had never heard of this film and so didn't know what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised. Well written, well filmed and with some great performances. Amusing, idiosyncratic with typical Allotment politics throughout. Hardly a Citizen Kane or a Casablanca, but there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half. You feel pleasantly refreshed after watching it.