Miss Potter (2006)
Country: GB/US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1
Director: Chris Noonan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson
Synopsis:
Authoress Beatrix Potter looks back from her Cumbrian retreat over her childhood, her doomed romance with her publisher, and her commitment to preserving the rural life by investing in working farms in the Lake District.
Review:
An undeniably lavish mise en scène and engaging performances characterise this helter skelter tour of Potter's life story, a zip at ninety minutes and leaving scant time to savour characters and situations before we are swept on. It's all calculated to lure the sixty-plus audience out of its front room, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that, but for most of its length it is far too cosy to provide much of a dramatic frisson. It has many of the elements of The Railway Children, for example, but little of the cumulative weight of that story, justifiable by the fact that this is all based on truth, I suppose. Moreover, one wonders why it was necessary to hire the mannered American Zellweger when her co-star, Emily Watson, would have made a perfect, if tall, Miss Potter herself.
Country: GB/US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1
Director: Chris Noonan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson
Synopsis:
Authoress Beatrix Potter looks back from her Cumbrian retreat over her childhood, her doomed romance with her publisher, and her commitment to preserving the rural life by investing in working farms in the Lake District.
Review:
An undeniably lavish mise en scène and engaging performances characterise this helter skelter tour of Potter's life story, a zip at ninety minutes and leaving scant time to savour characters and situations before we are swept on. It's all calculated to lure the sixty-plus audience out of its front room, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that, but for most of its length it is far too cosy to provide much of a dramatic frisson. It has many of the elements of The Railway Children, for example, but little of the cumulative weight of that story, justifiable by the fact that this is all based on truth, I suppose. Moreover, one wonders why it was necessary to hire the mannered American Zellweger when her co-star, Emily Watson, would have made a perfect, if tall, Miss Potter herself.
Country: GB/US
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1
Director: Chris Noonan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson
Synopsis:
Authoress Beatrix Potter looks back from her Cumbrian retreat over her childhood, her doomed romance with her publisher, and her commitment to preserving the rural life by investing in working farms in the Lake District.
Review:
An undeniably lavish mise en scène and engaging performances characterise this helter skelter tour of Potter's life story, a zip at ninety minutes and leaving scant time to savour characters and situations before we are swept on. It's all calculated to lure the sixty-plus audience out of its front room, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that, but for most of its length it is far too cosy to provide much of a dramatic frisson. It has many of the elements of The Railway Children, for example, but little of the cumulative weight of that story, justifiable by the fact that this is all based on truth, I suppose. Moreover, one wonders why it was necessary to hire the mannered American Zellweger when her co-star, Emily Watson, would have made a perfect, if tall, Miss Potter herself.