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.
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.