Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Memorable, crazy movie

As Good As It Gets

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

One of my all-time favorite movies. Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman create magic in this movie. They play two people who have experienced their share of disappointment and humiliation, really. Both have been passed-over in life and those around them look down on them and ignore them for whatever reason. The acting is simply superb here. Emma and Dustin of course, but also the support cast, including Kathy Baker which is reason to watch enough. The scene in the Airport Bar where they have lunch is just priceless, with Dustin entering by throwing down his luggage like he has absolutely nothing left in this world. The only problem with this movie is that it could have been longer, I would have loved to see their courtship. Honestly, I hope they married in that Airport Bar! Alone they have nothing, together they join the dance of life. Just a lovely film. Don't miss it.

I thought this was a Richard Curtis movie because I missed the credits - and a bad one at that! It is such a ludicrously plotted film played against a whimsical (almost fantasy) sunny London background that it gives age and romcoms a bad name. There is a market for older players to star in films aimed at an older audience - this does not do so because Dustin Hoffman will not act his age. He is pretending to be around 55 and Emma Thompson pretending to be about 45 ( a little middle age spread around the backside and tum tell you this!). So it is a mainstream romcom about two utter losers who find each other over a weekend in London, where Hoffman's character is attending his daughter's wedding ( a strange affair where she marries in ordinary clothes at a registry office, and then dolls up a wedding dress for the reception!) who has been estranged from him for quite some time. His job is on the line, while Emma Thompson (sounding ever so erudite and sensitive) has a crap survey job and a tiresome mother (Eileen Atkins pretending to be 57!). As the losers head towards the light, direction and script plod, but Hoffman gets to act very very well towards the denouement - something he has not done for ages! It saves the film a little, but pensioners looking for extra pension should not inflict this half hearted, unbelievable stuff on real pensioners and the rest of the movie going public!

This movie largely fell flat with the only redeeming feature for me the supposed mass murdering Pole living next door to the mother. Otherwise the main characters were generally monosyllabic losers in life with very little chemistry between each other. Emma Thompson may be elegant and endearing and Dustin Hoffman may be Dustin Hoffman, but there wasn't much for them to do here. I got their sadness, and I got how they found solace in each other, but there was nothing happening here, not in the plot, not in the dialogue, and not in the clichés of an 86 year old being crass or a couple of adults having to sit at a kids table. Bah.

"Last Chance Harvey" is, to me, a chance to see two great actors at work. That's it. That's all. It's an exhibition game, a free-skate, and it's a movie to be simply enjoyed, not analyzed.The great Dustin Hoffman here plays a middle-aged man, estranged from his ex-wife and adult daughter, estranged from his boss and industry, estranged from life. The enemy in this movie- though never explicitly stated- is mortality. The threat of death is what motivates Harvey to start a relationship with British spinster Kate, played by Emma Thompson. The movie does nicely parallel the true pattern of the aging baby-boomer generation... while only thirty years ago the thought of dating and marrying at age forty, fifty, sixty and beyond was unthinkable today it is commonplace. They are a generation that has never made peace with their own mortality and their solution is to become eternal teenagers.But back to the movie: the joy here is watching Hoffman and Thompson court and spark, enjoying themselves at a wedding and falling in love as they get to know one another. Dustin is so great an actor I could watch him read the phone book, and as usual he never hits a false note. Emma Thompson is good too, walking the fine line between tragic and pathetic, and it's great watching Kate awaken as Harvey spends his time on her.Okay, the plot doesn't offer much. Harvey's interactions with his ex and daughter put me in a coma, and his heart attack seemed contrived and anticlimactic. After all, just because he missed his park date with Kate doesn't mean he'll never see her again- he knows where she works for God's sake! But as I said before, this movie is not about plot... it's about hope, the hope that it's never too late to change your life or to find true love. Isn't that a very fine idea for a movie?GRADE: B-