An enjoyable piece of nostalgia for the London where I grew up, and the Young's Bitter which was the regular tipple of my Young days. Shame the Yanks struggle so with the accents, pity the cast was so disunited on whether to speak of Margate or Margit.
But that disunity reflected something else which jarred with me, and that was the chronology. The characters couldn't agree what year was the "present". Maybe in 10 or 20 years time when we get it out on video, dvd, or whatever else we have then, it will all be the old days, but it took me a while to work out that this 2001 film of a 1996 book was actually set in the mid 80s, and indeed appeared unsure of which year it really was meant to be. Am I being too prosaic? It probably wouldn't be so important in a movie that didn't have so many flashbacks, but to try and work out what is going on, it's helpful to be able to mentally anchor events to some sort of rough timeline. They spoke at one point in the "present" of Vince's 40th birthday, then we saw him being rescued as a baby from a house destroyed by a V1 "doodlebug", which places his birth as no later than 1944, and the "present" therefore being 1984. And of course the hop-picking and June's conception was in the pre-war days of the 30s, and she is now 50, so that also fits with 1984. But didn't Ray talk of Sue having been in Australia for 30 years, and she was in London in the Beatles era, with the (wrong) Yellow Submarine poster. That was made in 1968, so it has to now be 1998! Just hold on a mo!!!
This didn't ruin it for me, and I rate it 7/10 because the beer was so good! But I think the director would have done well to establish a few more time keys to help, so that the flashbacks made more sense.
But that disunity reflected something else which jarred with me, and that was the chronology. The characters couldn't agree what year was the "present". Maybe in 10 or 20 years time when we get it out on video, dvd, or whatever else we have then, it will all be the old days, but it took me a while to work out that this 2001 film of a 1996 book was actually set in the mid 80s, and indeed appeared unsure of which year it really was meant to be. Am I being too prosaic? It probably wouldn't be so important in a movie that didn't have so many flashbacks, but to try and work out what is going on, it's helpful to be able to mentally anchor events to some sort of rough timeline. They spoke at one point in the "present" of Vince's 40th birthday, then we saw him being rescued as a baby from a house destroyed by a V1 "doodlebug", which places his birth as no later than 1944, and the "present" therefore being 1984. And of course the hop-picking and June's conception was in the pre-war days of the 30s, and she is now 50, so that also fits with 1984. But didn't Ray talk of Sue having been in Australia for 30 years, and she was in London in the Beatles era, with the (wrong) Yellow Submarine poster. That was made in 1968, so it has to now be 1998! Just hold on a mo!!!
This didn't ruin it for me, and I rate it 7/10 because the beer was so good! But I think the director would have done well to establish a few more time keys to help, so that the flashbacks made more sense.