Change Your Image
chrisanddelilah
Reviews
Grow Your Own (2007)
Entertaining and moving
I saw Grow Your Own at a test screening and while it's not edgy indie fare, it was properly funny. The audience laughed loud and frequently, it was well crafted and overall I thought the film delivered. It felt to me like one of the better Ealing Comedies, focusing as it does on an insular community of allotment growers being forced to accommodate unexpected change from outsiders, in this case traumatised refugees. The cast included familiar comic types like Olivia Coleman and Omid Djalili (both excellent) and Benedict Wong (Sunshine) is riveting as an emotionally scared asylum seeker with a horrifying story to tell. Some story lines were better than others but where the film worked brilliantly was showing how loneliness, trauma and thoughtless behaviour are balanced by kind words and community spirit without resorting to sentimentalism or unrealistic plot twists. Really entertaining.