I really hate to criticise what seemed to been such a well-intentioned film, but somebody has to do it. Right from the beginning, the clichés came so thick and fast that I quickly reached the conclusion that this film had been made as the result of a competition for the best young amateur writer or director, with Timothy Spall generously donating his services free of charge to the winner. Unfortunately this turned out not to be the case, although I it was revealed at the end to have been funced by the National Lottery.
It's a slow road trip, a very, very slow one, in which Tom (Timothy Spall, aged about 120 years old), embarks upon a bus trip from Land's End to John O'Groats following the death of his wife. It has to be said that Spall plays this part with great aplomb, if that is actually the right word to describe such a pained performance. To be honest it also requires a considerable suspension of disbelief, because he seems barely capable of walking the length of his street, let along embarking on a solo trip of this magnitude.
Only a short way into the film it began to look as if there was a long list of boxes which needed to be ticked, with the currently trendy cause shoe-horned in no matter how inappropriately (the Ukrainian party was particularly cringeworthy and unlikely, although the one on the bus featuring the fully-veiled Muslim girl and the racist was contrived almost the point of embarrassment. I'm sure that writer Joe Ainsworth achieved far more realism during his stint at Brookside.
Whether you enjoyed it (and it seems many did), depends on whether you can force yourself to swallow the quite faintly ridiculous storyline. I genuinely tried to, I really did, but it left me wondering how nobody had dared to suggest that perhaps some of the scenes needed a bit of a re-think, If it had turned out to be all for a worthy cause I could have forgiven it, but Sheila Hancock carried off a very similar character in a very similar plot much better in the far superior film, Edie. The most impressive thing about this film was the way that Timothy Spall, then in his early sixties, very convincingly transformed himself into an ailing man in his nineties.
It's a slow road trip, a very, very slow one, in which Tom (Timothy Spall, aged about 120 years old), embarks upon a bus trip from Land's End to John O'Groats following the death of his wife. It has to be said that Spall plays this part with great aplomb, if that is actually the right word to describe such a pained performance. To be honest it also requires a considerable suspension of disbelief, because he seems barely capable of walking the length of his street, let along embarking on a solo trip of this magnitude.
Only a short way into the film it began to look as if there was a long list of boxes which needed to be ticked, with the currently trendy cause shoe-horned in no matter how inappropriately (the Ukrainian party was particularly cringeworthy and unlikely, although the one on the bus featuring the fully-veiled Muslim girl and the racist was contrived almost the point of embarrassment. I'm sure that writer Joe Ainsworth achieved far more realism during his stint at Brookside.
Whether you enjoyed it (and it seems many did), depends on whether you can force yourself to swallow the quite faintly ridiculous storyline. I genuinely tried to, I really did, but it left me wondering how nobody had dared to suggest that perhaps some of the scenes needed a bit of a re-think, If it had turned out to be all for a worthy cause I could have forgiven it, but Sheila Hancock carried off a very similar character in a very similar plot much better in the far superior film, Edie. The most impressive thing about this film was the way that Timothy Spall, then in his early sixties, very convincingly transformed himself into an ailing man in his nineties.