Surely there must have been something more substantial to
Graham Swift's Booker Prize-wining novel than this: three friends
(Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings and Tom Courtenay) pile into a
new Mercedes with a dead friend's son (Ray Winstone) to deliver
the friend's ashes into a certain favorite spot on the Atlantic.
Regrets are voiced, never-have-guessed sins are aired, and life,
and its opposite, are gotten on with, sighingly, sadly, but
uncomplainingly.
No, not much that's fresh: except the continuous efforts of the late
lamented Life of the Party (Michael Caine) to fix up his single friend
(a po-faced Hoskins) with every cute young girl in sight. And the
image of the nearly gen-x Winstone surlily holding his own, and
then some, with the bright lights of the angry-young-man era. And
maybe just seeing Hoskins play such a diminuendo'd, unaggressive, normal-life-loving guy--an absolute first in the
gallery of Hoskins little people. The real pleasure to be had,
though, is in the director Fred Schepisi's handling of the material.
A perennial first-choice of post-Kael critics in the United States,
Schepisi reveals that he actually is as good as they say he is. His
elegant widescreen compositions, and his collaboration with the
composer in particular, reveal an oft-forgotten mastery. Memo to
Harvey Weinstein: Take away some of Lasse Hallstrom's gigs and
give them to Schepisi.
Graham Swift's Booker Prize-wining novel than this: three friends
(Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings and Tom Courtenay) pile into a
new Mercedes with a dead friend's son (Ray Winstone) to deliver
the friend's ashes into a certain favorite spot on the Atlantic.
Regrets are voiced, never-have-guessed sins are aired, and life,
and its opposite, are gotten on with, sighingly, sadly, but
uncomplainingly.
No, not much that's fresh: except the continuous efforts of the late
lamented Life of the Party (Michael Caine) to fix up his single friend
(a po-faced Hoskins) with every cute young girl in sight. And the
image of the nearly gen-x Winstone surlily holding his own, and
then some, with the bright lights of the angry-young-man era. And
maybe just seeing Hoskins play such a diminuendo'd, unaggressive, normal-life-loving guy--an absolute first in the
gallery of Hoskins little people. The real pleasure to be had,
though, is in the director Fred Schepisi's handling of the material.
A perennial first-choice of post-Kael critics in the United States,
Schepisi reveals that he actually is as good as they say he is. His
elegant widescreen compositions, and his collaboration with the
composer in particular, reveal an oft-forgotten mastery. Memo to
Harvey Weinstein: Take away some of Lasse Hallstrom's gigs and
give them to Schepisi.