This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Annie Mary has a decidedly fraught relationship with her widowed father who puts her down at every opportunity and never ceases to remind her how inferior she is to her mother who died when Annie Mary was 15 and on the brink of a career in opera.At that time the poor girl put aside her chance of fame and fortune to concentrate on helping her father run his bakery business in a small Welsh village.Bullied,downtrodden,with little sense of self - worth,she seems destined for a life of perpetual misery until her father is struck down by a stroke.................... "Very Annie Mary" sounds like a movie that could have sunk in its own morass of self - pity but in fact it celebrates all the small (and not so small) victories that make human life so memorably uncertain,unpredictable and gloriously serendipitous for most of us. The people are not the mealy -mouthed BBC Mafia Welsh but the wonderfully verbose vibrant types celebrated by Dylan Thomas,people from whose mouths the words come tumbling out unchecked,they celebrate life rather than endure it,exactly the opposite to the characters in so many British turn - of - the - century comedy/dramas that are far better known. Briliiantly played by a cast that looks and sounds exactly right,"Very Annie Mary" is a movie that will both concern and enchant you. It's about living,sweating,swearing,loving,hating,lying and truthing human beings,infuriating,depressing and funny - just like you and me. This is what life is really like - increase your appetite for it by watching this uplifting movie.

I have seen this before, and it has been calling me to watch it again. I sat down today and floated through it - maybe you miss bits the first time - I know I enjoyed it today more than ever. I grew up with Welsh family, visits to the valleys, and loved them. This does not disrespect any of that, but gently take the Mick as you do with loved family members. It's a funny film and a touching film and in parts when she's being really stupid or trying to impress, cringe-making, but then it all comes right at the end. Quirky, oddball and unusual of course those words spring to mind, but the singing is sublime (dubbed?) and the Welsh scenery is of course beautiful. The cast are amazing and the conversation is natural - people behaving as they do. thanks for a very enjoyable couple of hours!

When you go see this film, please sit back and relax. This is a fable, a story where, yes, eccentric characters are overdramatized, but anyone that's been to Wales will see just that, the people are very funny. Rachel Griffiths is excellent, as is Jonathan Pryce, as her bullying Welsh father. This is not a US blockbuster, but then again, it wasn't supposed to be. The story has heart, and the one scene where Rachel's character (Annie-Mary) goes up in a balloon in a dance hall was very funny. The accents are hard for folks that don't understand any language other than American-English, but when you see a Liverpool film, a Scottish film, do you expect to understand anything other than the loveable laughable characters? View, sit back, relax..and enjoy the experience of "something different".

This film is superb. It's bonkers, realistic and fabulously fresh. It doesn't fit in with any common genre and really makes one feel a part of this bizarre Welsh community portrayed in the film.The characters are full and rounded, peculiar perhaps, but they are completely real. I've shown this film to a group of Year 11 students I teach, and they loved it. I've also shown it to my mother and she loved it too.It has universal appeal and the fact that it doesn't follow normal conventions is what makes it attractive and utterly brilliant.