PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
Mention the `pot comedy' genre to somebody and, depending on their age, images of either Dazed and Confused or Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke will probably pop into their heads. There seems to be a new `pot comedy' in theatres every couple of years, and each is just a recycled story full of the same jokes that you've already seen over and over again.
Saving Grace such a breath of fresh air in the `pot comedy' genre. When was the last time you had to go to an art house to see people toke up and act goofy? Never mind that – when was the last time you saw a British film written by a peripheral player from an American sitcom, and featuring both a recent modern rock chart-topper and a two-time Oscar-nominee?
Like The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine, Grace is a lightweight comedy that doesn't overcomplicate its story or overstaying its welcome. The film is about a horticulturist named Grace Trevethan (Brenda Blethyn, Little Voice) who becomes a widow as the film opens. One month after the funeral, she learns that her late husband's bad business investments have rendered his estate penniless. To make matters worse, he's also mortgaged their giant Cornwall home, and unless Grace can come up with £300,000, the bank will take all of her assets.
In debt up to her eyeballs, Grace decides to scrap her hobby of growing orchids in her giant greenhouse and, together with her pothead Scottish gardener Matthew (Craig Ferguson, The Drew Carey Show), decides to move her green thumb to marijuana. That's right - Grace and Matthew hatch a plan to grow dope and sell it by the kilo, splitting the profits after she pays off her creditors.
Grace, which won the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, has only a couple of scenes where people are wrecked on dope. There isn't anything funny about watching people get wasted in movies. It's barely fun in real life, unless you're participating in the shenanigans. That said, I still laughed my ass off when two Cornwall merchants that accidentally brewed marijuana with their tea, even though I'd already seen that scene in the film's trailer several times. I found Grace to be more effective in its simpler moments, like when Grace and Matthew nervously wait for credit card approval at a gardening store.
Grace could have easily been a television sitcom episode (I can just see Jack Tripper trying to hide his weed from Mr. Roper), or possibly a very special Blossom, but it manages to stretch its humble story into a ninety-minute film without adding superfluous scenes or dialogue. There are several subplots, involving everything from deportation to salmon-poaching, but none get in the way of Grace and Matthew's story. Okay, I would have cut out the part where Grace meets her husband's mistress.
Credit the screenwriters (Ferguson, The Big Tease and debut screenwriter Mark Crowdey) for not bogging the story down with enough deadweight to make a typical running time. Ferguson, who plays the slightly insane Mr. Wick on television, doesn't hog all the good lines for himself, but I think his character did manage to say each `F' word contained in the film.
1:34 – R for adult language, brief nudity and, of course, drug use
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