The plot of this movie is a very old one. Religious people are weak at best or hypocrites at worst. Real life is to be found in friendship, drinks, one night stands, and secular art. The main character predictably discovers this in the end and is thereby saved from a life of saintly drudgery.
That said, the performances are spectacular and save the movie from being a dull cliché. There are only really four main characters -- Rupert Grint (the parson's kid), Nicholas Farrell (his weak cuckolded father), Laura Linney (the parson's errant wife), and Julie Walters (the alcoholic aging actress who hires Grint on as a kind of personal servant and teaches him about "real" life).
Grint can say more with his angry, furrowed stare than with any line. So they don't give him much to say. He even managed to maintain that stare when he sank beneath his bathwater. Linney plays a truly frightening holy witch. Farrell is depressingly repressed with a hopeless stoicism. Walters goes way over the top -- demanding, manipulating, cursing and generally playing the outrageous English eccentric. It's all been done many times before, but this cast does a very good job of it too.
Yes, the film obviously was inspired by Harold and Maude, but thankfully Grint and Walters do not consummate their relationship. At least as far as we know, although they spend lots of time sleeping together in a tent. They just become pals and Grint grows up. He learns his "driving lesson."
It's not a bad movie, but I wouldn't fight for a parking place to see it. You've seen it all before.
That said, the performances are spectacular and save the movie from being a dull cliché. There are only really four main characters -- Rupert Grint (the parson's kid), Nicholas Farrell (his weak cuckolded father), Laura Linney (the parson's errant wife), and Julie Walters (the alcoholic aging actress who hires Grint on as a kind of personal servant and teaches him about "real" life).
Grint can say more with his angry, furrowed stare than with any line. So they don't give him much to say. He even managed to maintain that stare when he sank beneath his bathwater. Linney plays a truly frightening holy witch. Farrell is depressingly repressed with a hopeless stoicism. Walters goes way over the top -- demanding, manipulating, cursing and generally playing the outrageous English eccentric. It's all been done many times before, but this cast does a very good job of it too.
Yes, the film obviously was inspired by Harold and Maude, but thankfully Grint and Walters do not consummate their relationship. At least as far as we know, although they spend lots of time sleeping together in a tent. They just become pals and Grint grows up. He learns his "driving lesson."
It's not a bad movie, but I wouldn't fight for a parking place to see it. You've seen it all before.