Matialth
Good concept, poorly executed.
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Kirandeep Yoder
The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
Jackson Booth-Millard
From film debuting writer/director Ben Elton (co-creator of Blackadder, writer of The Thin Blue Line and star of Friday/Saturday Night Live), I had heard bad things about this film, but with a good cast of British stars I will still wanting to see it. Basically Lucy Bell (Joely Richardson) and Sam Bell (Hugh Laurie) are the happy couple with good looks, successful careers and a great love life, but what they long for is a baby, and it doesn't seem to be working. They get tested to make sure they can conceive, and everything seems pretty normal, and they try different methods for helping with conception, such as new age therapy, acupuncture, creative sex, and more besides, and these do not work either. So eventually Lucy and Sam decide upon the medical option, by having professionals, such as gynaecologist Mr. James (Rowan Atkinson), checking everything and trying to make the process more likely to work, and they have support from their friends, including hippie Druscilla (Emma Thompson). At the same time, Sam has been suffering writer's block, he works at the BBC as a commissioning editor, and he has to come up with a new idea for a comedy film, and unknown to Lucy he finds inspiration in their struggles, and her private diary. His work friend George (Adrian Lester) knows that he will be in big trouble with his wife if he does not tell her the truth about his writing inspiration, and the new film that is being made, and she is mortified when she finds out for herself. The couple are parted by this incident, and even though the film is completed, with Sam praised for his writing, he does not feel complete without Lucy, who has meanwhile become pregnant. There is the point when they meet again, he apologises, and they make up, with Sam saying that he will look after the baby when it is born, but Lucy has a miscarriage, and in the end all we know is that they carried on trying and trying, it is unclear whether they did get a baby. Also starring Resident Evil's James Purefoy as Carl Phipps, Pirate of the Caribbean's Tom Hollander as Ewan Proclaimer, Matthew Macfadyen as Nigel, Joanna Lumley as Sheila, Dawn French as Charlene and Eden Lake's Kelly Reilly as Nimnh. Laurie is a nice guy with sarcastic one liners, Richardson is sympathetic as the woman who can't get pregnant, and the other well known stars get their small moments, I will agree it is a little flat most of the time, and some of the on the nose jokes don't always work, the story was watchable enough, but overall it is a slightly silly romantic comedy. Adequate!
hmcusn294
I'm not a fan of British comedies unless they have sub-titles, without which I cannot understand half the dialogue, and I guess they didn't think this DVD would be sold outside Great Britain; no subtitles, which left me scratching my head during the scenes with the character of the Scottish director.Now, having said that, I loved this movie. I'm not too familiar with most of the players in the film, but Joely Richardson has made enough American films that she is a familiar face, and I thought she was perfect in the role of Lucy, which makes me wonder if some of these reviews are of another film. She was incredibly beautiful and brought life to her character It is a story of a childless British couple, Sam and Lucy Bell, who desperately want a baby but are, so far, infertile. Sam is a screenwriter who has developed a writers block and needs inspiration for a movie plot, and he decides, against Lucy's wishes, to use their struggle to become pregnant as the plot for a script.Lucy is having her own problems as she undergoes humiliating treatments and examinations by her weird OB Gyn, Rowan Atkinson, of Mr. Bean fame, and finds herself drawn to an actor client who has set his sights on her, and we find ourselves wondering if she will succumb to his advances. The story is billed as a comedy but it wanders back and forth between comedy, pathos and drama, and in the end leaves you wanting to see it again.....and if you are like me, again.
justincward
You can tell that this is going to be a joyless experience by the strangled, off-key gurgling of that trite old Buddy Holly tune by none other than Sir Paul (John owed it all to me) MacCartney, the well known chipmunk-cheeked murderer of music. Of course, Joely Richardson in and out of her knickers and simulating sex, even with Hugh (Doc House) Laurie, is enough to sustain most (straight) men's interest for half an hour, and I suppose (straight) women will enjoy Hugh Laurie 'daringly' being the butt of (predictable) masturbation gags for the same length of time. The gag where she slides off her scooter after visiting the gynecologist is the high spot. By then it should have dawned on anyone that this film has no story, beyond the two elements that are bolted on to keep the non-characters alive: 1) Joely Richardson, in spite of having wild sex five times a day, wants to go over the side with a 'dishy' actor, and 2) Hugh Laurie, whose amphetamine intake is never actually disclosed, is eventually stung into writing a first-time smash-hit film script by a poorly written Scots nuisance who ends up directing it with the dishy actor as lead. The fact of its being based on his wife's oh-so-secret diary causes them to split up for a few months. That's it. End of story. The film starts to drag after the gags have run out - Ben Elton's forte is the half-hour sitcom after all - and as the script descends further into trite, turgid cliché after trite, turgid cliché, a few Shakespeare references are thrown in to show just how pretentious the project is, and all the usual Britflick club members are wheeled out to do their party pieces; they even squeeze in Dawn French, the Paul MacCartney of comedy. By the end Joely Richardson's hips begin to look distinctly childbearing. It's particularly annoying that it's about the very special pain of extremely middle-class people, (the 'park' is an enclosed private condo garden), while the views of the film business that are presumably intended to be satirical only communicate a sort of sleazy tedium. Do they have a baby at the end? ***MAJOR SPOILER TO SAVE NINETY MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE*** Elton doesn't say, they just simulate sex in public a lot more. It's a wind-up.
debk1223
I ran across this movie today on the WE channel. It caught my attention because it had Hugh Laurie in it and I'm a huge fan of his. So I sat down to watch. I'm glad I did. I went through 7 years of trying to conceive and could relate to just about everything the couple was going through. I laughed out loud when Lucy was riding her moped back from the gyno and she had been lubed up and she slipped off the seat. I thought it was very well written. We got to see just how much this couple loved each other. I do think that Lucy blew the whole diary thing out of proportion. Yes she had a right to be angry but to want to throw her whole marriage down the drain seemed a little ridiculous. I would recommend watching it.
