User reviews

After reading some of the other reviews I wonder what you expect from a nice little English movie. Burt Reynolds was great, but Imelda Staunton was exceptional. She was hilarious in all her scenes and we laughed out loud. It's very British set in a very British setting.

If you liked Calendar Girls you'll like this. It's not great art, just great entertainment with a really good British cast, and an ageing but nevertheless very entertaining Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds who I must admit I did not think could act was quite good throughout and delivered his Shakespeare well. If there was one criticism it would be the scenes in the US were not brilliantly shot

I'm a Burt Reynolds fan - there i have admitted it! Anyway, to see a film of his get a theatrical release made this a must see film for me...and i wasn't disappointed. No need to go over the plot but all the performances in the film are excellent and Burt is the best he has been for years..in fact since Boogie Nights in my opinion. Like the other comments, there were no really laugh out loud moments but just a nice stream of funny,well acted and moving moments. The scene at the start were Jefferson Steele was watching an old home movie of his daughter was moving,well acted by Burt.

He obviously was quite happy to send himself as the has-been star (so appropriate) but still with a lot to prove. Despite all the bad plastic surgery he has had, he didn't look too bad in this film..and that in itself made me pleased.

So overall, this is charming,warm hearted film with some great performances. As for Burt, his best film in years, without any doubt. He is obviously still a great actor, with tremendous screen prescence and is rightly hailed as Hollywood legend. I just hope we see more of Burt in films of this quality.

there's the feeling that this film was designed and constructed by a committee out of focus-group friendly but disconnected components; they then seemingly accidentally hired some great talent to do some of the work. The script is often funny and sharp, but frequently slumps into sentimentality. A lot of the acting is very good, but Burt Reynolds is mostly helpless: he can't act the part he has been given except for some of the calmer domestic comedy. Acting the part of an actor acting King Lear? No, he's lost. Most things are done very well, the photography and direction are fine and the music only really grates during the prolonged sentimental guff that spoils the flow of the film particularly in the middle and at the end. It's worth watching for some fine comic acting from the English part of the cast, and for some very professional filmmaking too. It's worth fast forwarding through some of the sentiment, and some of the American acting too.

A very easy comedy around a King Lear representation by a theater of amateurs. A faded American film star and his adventures in a Stratdford of England.

A ball of cliches , easy humor and fake crisis. Short, in some measure, a Hallmark.

But half of glass is not empty. The admirable cast, their nice work, the kiss of Imelda Staunton and Burt Reynolds, a Burt Reinolds reminding, in few scenes, Sir Sean Connery and, sure, Derek Jacobi just admirable, the relation children parents and nice job of Bond are motives to see this film, not great, not impressive but nice.

My wife hit it on the head by saying it was really a TV film and like Midsomer Murders without the Murders!

That's all I really wanted to say except that the performances were generally good and Burt Reynolds wig was excellent and looked almost real. I'm now trying to make this up to ten lines but don't really have that much to say and wish that short, pertinent comments were allowed. Oh I've just remembered that Suffolk suddenly had hills, moved presumably from the Isle of Man so that the film had a tax subsidy. I'm really struggling now to say anything else but I would like these comments to be seen by filmgoers. Phew

This is very much a Hollywood version of England - a very romantic English village - with village green, small shops that people use, a wonderful church, and all is well - it is just a little too unrealistic- this England doesn't exist anymore, anywhere, but let that slide for a moment - fake nostalgia is OK.

The whole premise of the movie is this: aging American action hero runs out of offers so ends up taking what he thinks is Shakespeare at Stratford, but well, it's not that Stratford.

My real issue with this was that Burt Reynolds is meant to discover some humanity and acting ability by the end - but honestly....

Worth watching is there's nothing else on - it has a small but certain charm - it is saved by an excellent support cast and it's overall tone - but it is like watching a slice of the 50s - and though that may seem like the perfect recommendation here it all falls somewhat flat...

Overall, watchable but a mere speck of what it could have been with the right actor in the lead.

I saw this twice today on DVD and loved it. Of course, it's pure fantasy and I wish it had really been shot in one of Suffolk's Stratfords, though the Isle of Man serves well enough. Burt Reynolds does grumpy very well and, as ever, isn't afraid to send himself up - and nor is the great Derek Jacobi as his bitchy rival. I thought Imelda Staunton's turn as his adoring, then disillusioned fan overdone, but Samantha Bond is a tour de force as his less enchanted director. The build-up to the storm scene is ingenious and when he gets out of his vehicle Reynolds shows that he can cut the mustard as Lear. Of course, the other members of the Stratford Theatre Company are improbably good actors, but I shan't complain. The final twist is an extra treat. What a shame only Her Majesty seems to have seen the film in the cinema

There is nothing really original in the story. A film dealing with the production of a play with a Prima Donna star. We had something similar with the Dustin Hoffman directed Quartet in 2012.

Despite listing Ian Hislop as a co-writer it's also not very biting. Instead it is a run of the mill slightly amusing movie with hardly any laugh out loud moments and relies on the charm of its cast.

Burt Reynolds plays an over the hill action star whose equally has been agent (a frail Charles Durning) sets him up for King Lear for an amateur drama company who want to raise funds to keep going and hey ho Reynolds is on his way to England and a jaunt in the country for he thinks he will be doing Shakespeare in Stratford, but its the small village of Stratford.

So now you have a big celebrity in a small village reluctantly taking part and struggling with Shakespeare. The locals do their best to make him feel pampered and he feels like a fish out of water with not even a decent mobile phone signal.

Samantha Bond, Imelda Staunton, Derek Jacobi are all in hand to rise above a mundane script. You can tell that even on third gear Jacobi has nailed his Shakespearean text while even though in a well shot scene in the howling rain at night, Reynolds gamely recites Lear but its still mangled.

Its not bad but it should had been a lot better. Reynolds has enough class to keep it all together, the subplot involving Reynolds daughter just did not work for me but the film is easy going just like its main star.

The film has a lot of nonsensical points, but it's so predictable that you don't even notice. You just know what's going to happen because they're pantomiming a standard drama that is pantomiming real life badly throughout all of it.

One strong point about it is that it manages to be genuinely funny despite its predictability. I think it's from the excessively dramatic directing. It's about characters doing a drama but I think a bit of the irony is the fact that many of theme seem to have more dramatic reactions to daily problems than the characters in a play would.

A performance of King Lear is at the centre of it all and they pretend like it's related by having the subplot of Reynolds' daughter squabbling with him, but it's really not related to Lear in the least.

It's a pleasant and modestly funny watch, but don't expect anything further from it.

Honourable Mentions: Wild Child (2008). A spoiled US girl goes to England. It wasn't enough for the plot to have extremely predictable mechanics, now the very plot is recycled to the extent that all this horde of similar movies are technically remakes of each other.

there were moments that i couldn't help smiled or laughed lightly. the screenplay was quite dramatic, the casting did a very nice job except signed up burt reynolds who actually performed quite poorly when he was doing the rehearsals and played king lear on the stage. he actually became the weakest part of this comedy. fooled him to stradford to play the role was a disastrous arrangement just like chosen him as that character. he performed so poorly on those stage scenes, this was his worst performance ever! and i have to discredit one of the viewers who claimed it's his best performance. it's watchable but not too good just because reynolds' lukewarm, absent-minded and out-of-placed poor performance; if this role recruited michael caine to play, it would be much better. i rest my case.

each actor has the charm of a burnt match stick and the entire movie looks like some grade B second class Hollywood movie studio film from the 1930's - story and all.

just awful plot from start to finish! cheap melodrama brought to you with completely lifeless acting. a department store mannequin with a script card could have done as well. mr reynolds and fellow cast members just sleepwalk through the entire story and the big hospital drama is just laughable.

this movie (for me) was so bad at the start it became a challenge to see how much more bad it could get ---- it does! so if you are looking for a movie to laff at because it's just plain 'stoopid' this is your movie!

Great cast, writers with good reputations, a promising premise for a comedy... what went wrong?

Just about everything. The script is too cliched, the dialogue leaden, the jokes obvious, and the performances uneven. Blame for the latter must go to the director, because this is a high calibre troupe. He can also take blame for awful pacing and bland visuals.

Saddest of all is Burt Reynolds, clearly in real life physical pain throughout, and struggling with this dog of a film. Like the character he plays the idea of coning to England to work alongside the likes of Derek Jacobi, Samantha Bond and the others must've seemed a good prospect. Unlike his character, however, I doubt there was any sense of redemption or growth - just another bad film done for the money.

A sad, unfunny film that wastes good ideas and great talent in a genuinely painful watch. Avoid.

I don't go to the movies very often - in fact I can't remember the last time - but this was on offer and I'm very glad that I took it up. I have always liked Burt Reynolds, particularly Evening Shade, and I adore Charles Durning, so I squeaked a bit when the names came up at the start. It's a gentle mickey-take of English village life, English country types and the ageing movie start grasping at straws to redeem himself before it's too late. Beautifully shot - I don't care where - in British Countryside with cottages to die for, clear complexions and charming pigs, it is funny, engaging (by the yardstick I judge any film or programme - do I care if they all live or die; the answer in this case, is obviously "yes"). The characters are all wonderfully drawn and the story bowls along at a comfortable pace, witty, pretty and a damn good night's entertainment. I enjoyed an ice cream at the interval, but I shall buy it on DVD.

Last DVD on the comedy shelf, it was either this or "18-year old virgin" or many things that weren't quite American Pie with Eugene Levy. This won, by default, and was actually a pretty decent laugh. Burt was a little unintelligible but the British cast all hit the spot and the scenery played its part. A little bit Local Hero meets Shakespeare in Love, sit back on a slow evening and let the film entertain you. It's all fairly predictable in pace but the writing is good and delivery effective. What's more important is something like this got made and provides an alternative to all those Eugene Levy movies! No offence, Mr. Levy

A Film that i saw advertised never got to see,but came in the cinemas and went out again straight away.

i found it for a fiver in tescos and thought why not, a good casting, reynolds as lear playing with a British tour de force.

A wonderful i think piece of British cinema, some great one liners and reynolds doesn't steal the show, he shares it with the pigs and his sterilised hot tub and a wonderful cast who all admitted they were starstruck working with "burt reynolds".

even the dog gets some great lines in my opinion watch it, its one of them little gems that i will go on about.

with such trash in the last few year being made Indiana jones and the X files ripoff (thank god i didn't buy it or even cinema to view that ) around this film is a tonic to watch.one i can watch again and again i think.

thank you "you bunch of amateurs".

As someone thoroughly immersed in am dram and in particular Shakespeare I found this film thoroughly entertaining. I must admit that having loved Burt Reynolds in the good old days when he was in Riverboat on TV, I did a double take when I saw his very odd plastic surgery face, that could hardly register an expression. When I got over that, the usual suspects of English cinema conveyed all the bitchiness and ideas of grandeur of a typical am dram society. I particularly liked the reference to the fact that they all acted for no money or fame and held down daytime jobs. I am afraid that Burt's delivery of Lear left a lot to be desired and as my husband is about to direct King Lear we had to laugh as Imelda Staunton( good as she was) as one of Lear's daughters until I pointed out his actress in the part was about the same age. A problem that occurs in most am drams is that the people in them are too old for the parts. Imelda was very funny and Derek Jacobi sending himself up was a scream too. Not a great film but an amusing, small English film and much better than a lot of other small English films I have seen

This is such a sweet movie and very underrated. This is by far one of Burt Reynolds best movies. If you've not seen this movie you are truly missing out. It's directed perfectly with excellent acting with a beautiful storyline. I can watch this movie over and over.