Wow! Such a good movie.

Let's be realistic.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

I have always liked a few British independent films, and I have to say this is a really good one, adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by George Orwell. Basically Gordon Comstock (a terrifically posh and funny Richard E. Grant) is a copywriter at an advertising agency, mostly supporting the product Covex, and when he is offered a higher rank and pay, he decides to quit because of good response to his poetry writing. So he starts working in a book store, while he is trying to write the perfect poem and get some recognition and pay. His girlfriend Rosemary (an enjoyable Helena Bonham Carter) does still love him and want him to succeed, even with all his many faults. When he does get a big profit from a book, he just waists it on celebrating. This over-ambition and self-admiring will be his downfall as he becomes forced into poverty. He ends up having to get a cheaper room, and another lower pay library. There is a happy ending though when he finally decides to go back to the advertising company, and his poetry still comes to use, he gets married to Rosemary, and he has a baby coming! Also starring Julian Wadham as Ravelston, Shakespeare in Love's Jim Carter as Erskine, Harriet Walter as Gordon's sister Julia Comstock and The Royle Family's Liz Smith as Mrs. Meakin. The highlights are the moments with Grant and the Aspidistra plant, and the end song "Tiger in the Night" by Colin Blunstone is very pleasant. Very good!

A good version of a not very well known book by George Orwell. In 1930s London, Gordon Comstock (Richard E. Grant in a not very impressive performance) stars as a copy writer in an ad agency (where he is considered among the best in the trade) who leaves his job in order to pursue his vocation as a poet. That turns out to be a very bad decision, not least because his poetry doesn't arise from mediocrity. His life goes downhill after leaving the ad agency, at least from a material point of view, moving from one bad form of housing to another worse, until he finishes in what 1930s Europe would be the equivalent of a slum. His long suffering girlfriend, Helena Bonham-Carter, accompanies him, but up to a point, and in the end, it is she who makes him go back to his senses. Comstock final embracement of bourgeoisie conformism (which is in the book) leaves something of a bad taste (also, the movie is surprisingly pro life on the issue of abortion). Something I have found also surprising: It has been said that Orwell turn away from the left after his disillusionment with the Stalinist repression of the trotskyites during the Spanish civil war, but this book was written before that war, and Orwell already happily punctures more than a few of the left's sacred cows.

I had high hopes for this film. I thought the premise interesting. I stuck through it, even though I found the acting, save Helena Bonham Carter, unremarkable. I kept hoping my time spent would pay off, but in the end I was left me wondering why they even bothered to make this thing. Maybe in George Orwell's version there is a message worth conveying. If this film accomplished anything, it has inspired me to read Orwell's classic. I find it hard to believe his tale could be as disappointing as this adaption. If the film maker's message is "the mundane life is worth living", well then, they've succeeded. I would recommend this film to no one; 101 minutes of my life wasted.

this seemed an odd combination of Withnail and I with A Room with a View.. sometimes it worked, other times it did not. tragedy that they changed the name for the US release though.. Keep the Apidistra Flying is much better than the nothing title A Merry War. acting was okay, script was okay.. overall it was a mediocre film..