Perfectly adorable

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Every plot development in this movie, a meditation on life, death, love, poetic inspiration, and family ties, is hackneyed and accordingly totally predictable, but it satisfies just the same. The secret, I think, is the beauty which the cinematographer has wrung out of London, a preposterously gorgeous "retirement hotel," and the faces of the lead and character actors; the civility, respect for diversity, and stoicism inherent in the dialog; and the complete absence of anything like a laugh track to the comedy. Mrs. Palfrey, a London retiree recently widowed (played by Joan Plowright), befriends a good looking, slightly offbeat young man (played by Rupert Friend) who writes. A sensitive chap, he honors her friendship with the respect an older lady deserves. She guides him like the grandson she unfortunately has always had. He meets a girl. She lets him go. Enjoy it.

Thank you Mr. Ireland for not only making a movie that is intelligent, but one that the American ear can understand. I cannot even begin to describe how frustrating it is to try to watch a movie, even American-made, where it's mostly mumbling, or English accents that are difficult to understand. What we have here is a movie for adults, and one that does not make the viewer go HUH? at the end. No special effects are needed, or mad car crashes, or violence to tell the story. Just a good story and script and actors who can actually act and not have to rely on a computer to make the movie a success. Not to say that a younger person would find this movie boring. The story is simple and plausible, and in its simplicity is beauty. An elderly widow moves to London in order to be closer to her family, which like most families, tend to want to forget about their aging relatives and do their best to avoid them as much as possible. The movie makes a wonderful point about how sad and lonely aging can be, and what is particularly sad is the place where Mrs. Palfrey ends up. The scenes in the dining room are some of the best. Why is it that there are assigned tables and that no one takes it upon themselves to sit with someone else, even if they do not speak to one another, so that no one is eating alone? It is a reminder of how lonely life can be. Surrounded by people but lonely, unwanted and unappreciated. Then an accident occurs that brings a young man into Mrs. Palfrey's life, and somehow life seems worth living again and is not so lonely. There is something to look forward to, even if it's just reliving one's memories. What is especially good about this movie is that every actor does a superb job, even if the part is minor. Joan Plowright, as Mrs. Palfrey, is wonderful, as usual. What happens in a lot of movies with an outstanding actor is that the other actors seem to pale in comparison. Not so in this movie. Rupert Friend is perfect as the "adopted" grandson and I hope to see the 2 of them together in other projects.

My wife and I are in our sixties, on the cusp of the people who lived in the Claremont. Memories dim, connections become tenuous, and the good moments are all the more precious. As we watched it at home in our den, just the two of us together, without a word to each other, we realized our good fortune to have each other, to share experiences such as this. This film was inspired, yet true to the reality of those at the two poles of adulthood; Mrs. Palefry with her memories, and Ludovic, uncertain whether life is an insurmountable challenge or a delightful complexity to be unraveled and shared through his writing.While meeting "cute" could be a cinematic cliché, the genuineness of the characters immediately dispelled that thought, mostly because we cared about these people from the beginning. Every person who appeared in the film, from the forlorn doorman, the waitress, the hotel residents, all were people with real lives, whom we just didn't get quite enough time to get to know better.The scene where the three residents spontaneously joined in singing of "Autumnal Romance," took the risk of turning this serious film into a parody of a musical. It was a risk wisely taken, since those musicals are abstractions of human spirit that is quite real.Ludivic's singing the words, "For all we know," but to a different melody, was a stroke of brilliance, as it focused on the poetry, the touching mystery of these lyrics, disconnected from the enchanting music.If life is, as the song suggests, "only a dream," an ephemeral vivid simulacrum of life, usually lost upon awakening; this film managed to give this singular dream a permanence that will be treasured by young and old alike.

Joan Plowright is good in this, and I imagine the producers only secured funding on the strength of her signing up to it. I had been looking forward to seeing this for ages - it sounded just my kind of film - and was very pleased to get the DVD this week.But the film is so disappointing. A key part of the problem is presumably that the novel this is based on is both third-rate (the screenplay trots out one cliché after another: the London you see is the London Americans think of, red buses everywhere etc); and set in the fifties. The film needlessly updates the setting to the present day but in so doing makes an absolute nonsense of what is already a thin story. The 'residents' of the hotel are poorly drawn stereotypes, and even the usually wonderful Anna Massey seems to be embarrassed to be in this mess. (The scene where she collapses is pitifully bad). Rupert Friend is a good male lead, and he clearly will go far, but the role he is asked to play is quite unbelievable and especially the bizarre scene where he & Mrs Palfrey visit his mother. Other cast members are either poorly used (Timothy Bateson - who was in the original cast of Waiting for Godot for goodness' sake - plays a muttering half-wit of a porter), or just rubbish. I laughed at the fact that the casting director of the film cast himself as the hotel manager, I don't think anyone else would somehow! The best part of the film other than Plowright is the cinematography which keeps trying to rise above the handicaps of the script & direction.In essence this is a classic example of a film where you can see what kind of film the director imagined he was making but patently hasn't succeeded, and I'm hardly surprised that it hasn't gained distribution in the UK (or even a UK DVD release for that matter) as it is a very lacklustre and disappointing product.