Latest Updates - Emma Thompson

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Try as I might, I always get this muddled in my brain with Howard's End - Doh!

But this is an absolute masterpiece of depiction of tortured, unspoken, unacknowledged love - It's always there between Hopkins' and Thompson's characters, like a thick, heavy fog of love, and both pretending they don't see it, because they feel they can't due to circumstance.

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Nobody's finest hour.

Ouch...

...They don't come much more overly acted, hammy and lovey than this wildly melodramatic cringe-fest.

Not seen it since way back when, and had only a vague memory, or impression of it, and it has aged very badly indeed.

A good idea at heart, of a man inviting his old school type friends to his mansion over new years, having not seen them in ten years, and seeing how all their lives have changed - mostly for worse, each with their own brand of baggage...

...But the acting, script, and characters are all obnoxious in the extreme, as they portray a ludicrous series of scenes as this "drama" unfolds.

The excessive use of pop songs of the time is grating, especially through the first two thirds of the film, and the only saving graces are the (almost) good-ish final ten minutes, when everybody dials it down a little, and the peripheral character of Vera, the housemaid / cook, who is the only solid character, played with the only solid acting in this movie.

Otherwise, just awful.