thejoebloggs

As a person in their mid 50's, I watched this with just my wife - no children or grandchildren as an excuse. We were pleasantly surprised at a slight departure for Disney - metaphors all over the place. The characters had to face up to the real problems of the work place, not the usual fairy tale pap. Basically its a story about the little man against the evils of big business, brilliantly told. The goodies are not super good but decent with consciences, whilst the bad are morally corrupt - far closer to reality than Disney has ever got before. We appreciated the humour of the 'out-takes' at the closing credits. All in all a kids film made for adults.

Stephen Harrigan has produced a script that the Bard himself would have been proud of. Patrick Stewart, in the lead, heads a cast that lived up to the quality screenplay. On the whole, a magnificent film, worthy of a cinema run.

Sadly a great opportunity to utilise a superb cast to bring King Lear up to date. However, instead, we got a contrived family drama that appeared to dip into Lear when the writer had run out of ideas, the cast worked hard but it just didn't gel. Recently Stephen Harrigan showed how to adapt and update the classics with his screenplay for the magnificent TV movie "King of Texas".