MY LIFE SO FAR
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1999 Christopher Null
filmcritic.com
I guess you're either one of those people who loves 1930's Scottish coming-of-age stories, or you're not.
Looks like I'm not.
Narrated by the precocious Fraser (Norman), we tour the life of a wee Scottish lad who seems brilliant beyond his years. Fraser's life is dominated by his large family, which runs a sphagnum moss plantation – the only one in Europe, we're told (many times). There's dad (Firth), a Beethoven freak and spare-time inventor; mom (Mastrantonio in a bad Scottish accent), the wallflower; Gamma (Harris), the gamma; crusty Uncle Morris (McDowell – wasted in this role); and his child fiancée/bride Eloise (Jacob).
What a fine, dysfunctional family they make, what with dad's inventions going awry, and both father and son making goo-goo eyes for Eloise. And when Fraser finds grandpa's old stash of Victorian-era pornography stashed away in the attic, boy, look out!
All of this tries to be very quaint and sweet, but turns out to be perverse and disturbing, to say the least. Dad is nothing short of a lech, and in fact, all the adults in this picture are sorry role models. (No small wonder that the epilogue states that Fraser grew up to be `a successful television executive.' Fitting indeed.)
MY LIFE SO FAR wants to be a hybrid of UNSTRUNG HEROES and COLD COMFORT FARM, but lacks the charm of either of them. Instead, it's just a twisted little art movie that will probably get steamrollered on release.
The opening credits warn you that this `Based on a True Story.' Why they picked *this* story to turn into a movie is beyond me.
RATING: **
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Hugh Hudson Producer: Steve Norris, David Puttnam Writer: Simon Donald Starring: Colin Firth, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Irene Jacob, Malcolm McDowell, Rosemary Harris, Tcheky Karyo, Robert Norman
http://miramax.com/mm_front/owa/mp.entryPoint?action=0&midStr=566
Christopher Null - null@filmcritic.com - http://www.filmcritic.com Author - Network Administrator's Reference, 1999, ISBN 0-07-882588-1 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0078825881/filmcriticcom
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews