SAVING GRACE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Grace's life has gone to pot so she has turned to pot as the solution to
her troubles -- not the smoking of it but its extremely lucrative
cultivation. In Nigel Cole's comedy, SAVING GRACE, Grace is
dramatically underplayed by two-time Academy Award nominee Brenda
Blethyn (SECRETS AND LIES and LITTLE VOICE).
And therein lies the problem with the British comedy SAVING GRACE; it is
so low-key as to be almost no-key whatsoever. The situations in it are
sometimes cute but never funny enough to provoke actual laughter. Think
of it as WAKING NED DEVINE run at slow speed. There is even a brief
scene of a scrawny old man seen running around completely nude, much
like the naked, octogenarian biker in WAKING NED DEVINE. Frankly, one
of those is enough. I've seen it; I don't want to see it again.
As the story opens, the inhabitants of the small town where Grace lives
have begun to do her favors. They will not accept her money because
they know that her dead husband has left her heavily in debt, something
that she is the last to learn. She even discovers that the family has a
Swiss bank account, albeit an empty one.
As the bank is about to repossess her large estate, Grace, an
accomplished orchid grower, hits upon a scheme to raise the 300,000
pounds she needs to pay off the lien against her property. With the
help of her gardener, Matthew (Craig Ferguson), she turns her gardening
skills to the growing of marijuana plants -- lots of them, enough for 20
kilos in their first harvest.
The movie's best scene occurs when Grace and Matthew turn on the massive
lights that they use to boost production in her greenhouse. Lighting up
the night sky like the aurora borealis, their nightly light show becomes
as popular as fireworks on the Fourth of July. On the first occasion of
the lighting, the movie plays "Spirit In The Sky" loudly. It is a
moment worth a nice smile, even if no laughs.
The moments that produced the most laughter in our audience were when
the characters got giddily stoned with their weed. As they laughed
uncontrollably on the screen, it became somewhat infectious.
Although it might seem that writers Mark Crowdy and Craig Ferguson were
painting themselves into a corner, they managed to come up with an
imaginative ending. Even so, I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy. I
prefer comedies that are funny. And I like to laugh every now and then.
SAVING GRACE wasn't able to fill those simple requirements.
SAVING GRACE runs 1:34. It is rated R for drug content and language and
would be acceptable for older teenagers.
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Have I seen this movie: No
Will I see It: Doubtful
