The Girl in the Café
It took me a while to decide whether this was “movie” enough to compell me to write a review – I do write reviews of TV movies in general, but they’re usually pre-90s and usually American. I kinda hoped the movie would be so good that I couldn’t not write something about it in the end. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, but I’ve decided to at least set a precedent ‘cos there are a lot of TV movies I have things to say about.
The problem here is that the build is too slow. I felt Richard Curtis really became the worst kind of artistic campaigner back with the whole G8 / “Make Poverty History” thing – even the great Vicar of Dibley episode, which ultimately made me bawl, kind of rang a little too preachy. Here, it’s like he’s holding it all back like in this attempt to deliver a sucker punch in the 11th hour, yet in holding back so hard, he kind of forgets to put anything else in to pass the time. It’s a ridiculously slow build that even Kelly McDonald and Bill Nighy, both actors I have really loved in the past, fail to liven. I’m amazed I’ve come up with two paragraphs of review here, to be frank.