Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

At the end of the last conversation I had with my father before he died, he called me a horse's ass. That conversation was the final topper to a very complicated relationship as my father was a man that I feared as a child and pretty much disliked as an adult. Yet, some of the fondest memories I have of my life involve my father and our times together.I guess all relationships between fathers and sons could best be described as knotty, but the one shown in this film, I must admit, hit very close to home. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the film as much as I did, and it appears from the comments of viewers and critics that I enjoyed it far more than most viewers.The basic story, I'm sure, has been repeated countless times throughout history and will be repeated countless times in the future. Blake, a highly successful writer and editor, never received the recognition of "a job well done" from his father. Arthur is a popular physician and raconteur who constantly failed to show his admiration for his son's profession.Blake realized at an early age that his father had been having a long-term affair with his aunt, and this knowledge colored every part of their relationship. One thing that Blake cannot understand is why his mother stays married to his father for he is sure that she, also, is aware of her husband's relationship with her sister.The story begins in the present, but most of it is told in flashbacks as Arthur is dying. The adult Blake is played by Colin Firth with just the right amount of distance and depression. He is not a happy man because he never has been able to come to terms with his feelings for his father. Teenaged Blake is played beautifully by Matthew Beard. It is this Blake that we see most of in the film, and his performance is impressive.Juliet Stevenson is a wonderful actress, and she gives this film a strong, quiet - but not necessarily longtime suffering - performance as Blake's mother. She is one of those women whom you never realize her strength and resourcefulness until push comes to shove.Jim Broadbent may be a touch over the top as Arthur, but, for me, he hits the nail on the head. We all have public and private faces. Arthur rarely reveals the private one. I found myself liking him in spite of myself.As I said, this film turned out to be very personal to me. I found myself sometimes being amazed at how much Arthur was like my own father and Blake so much like myself. Even without the personal insight, I think you will find this a rewarding look at the bond between two strong, yet totally different men - OR - the bond between two strong, completely similar men. Fathers and sons - will that connection ever be fully understood?

This is one of the truest depictions of the dynamics experienced by many fathers and sons. Based on Blake Morrison's autobiographical book, this relatively short film (90 plus minutes) depicts the love, anger, embarrassment, jealousy, and regret experienced by a son towards his larger-than-life father. Colin Firth gives a convincing performance as the successful London writer who must confront these conflictive feelings when he returns to the country home of his youth to be with his dying father and reminisces about their moments together while the truth continues to elude him. In another stellar turn, Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent is brilliant as the exuberant, self-confident physician father who despite his good intentions, generous spirit, and warm affection cannot win his son's love due to his insensitivity. An excellent supporting cast and the beauty of the British countryside further enhance this bittersweet slice of family life where love, resentment, and a regret are tangled in a son's heart and questions about his father may never be answered. The movie's main point and the reason for its success is to portrait its characters honestly neither as heroes nor as villains without providing an easy resolution.A must see for all those who have loved and lost their fathers. Although the film is not actually sentimental, there is a scene of raw emotional power between father and son that will move anybody to tears.

This is a clever, crafty but faintly annoying film about coming to terms with your parents and your upbringing. Often it is fiction-writers who handle this theme best, such as John Le Carre in A Perfect Spy who based the hero's father on his own. Le Carre is reported as saying that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised". The poet Blake Morrison however sought to exorcise his parental demons by way of a "memoir". Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) has a pretty restless camera both in terms of space and time and three actors (all good) are required to play Blake. Dad, played to the hilt by Jim Broadbent, is a country doctor, a charming, slightly raffish egoist who probably hasn't read a book in his life, while Blake is an introspective, serious-minded reader of Dostoyevski (who wrote about a man who killed his father). Actually, on the evidence of the film, Arthur wasn't so bad – I thought his driving lessons on the beach in the Alvis for example were a model of parental instruction- but it has to be admitted he could be a trifle insensitive, and of course the bit of mild philandering with "Aunt" Beaty and others didn't go down well with a censorious 15 year old.What is a bit of a mystery is why at 40 Blake is still fuming about his childhood. He has his own family and career, yet he still craves the old boy's approval. When, as Arthur says "time's up come in number 3" (he is diagnosed with terminal cancer) Blake realises he needs "to talk", but somehow that doesn't happen – after all this is middle class England. He is sorry for his put-upon mother (Juliet Stevenson) but he can't really communicate with her either – very, very English (though she happens to be Irish).Colin Firth plays Blake as a 40 year old. He seems fated to be cast in emotionally constipated roles but it has to be admitted he does a good job. Matthew Beard as the teenage Blake catches the awkward prurience required. All the acting is first rate, in fact.The nifty cutting and camera work, the sly use of mirrors, and the non-linear exposition gives a certain freshness to the film, but at the end of the day, not only is Blake no closer to understanding (and forgiving) Arthur, but Arthur doesn't even realise there is a problem – a failure of communication, in fact. What we get is a very eloquent explanation of why Blake feels sorry for himself.Blake has since gone on and given his mother, now deceased, the same treatment. No doubt a film will follow. I think a novel would have been kinder, and perhaps more apposite. The problem with using real people as your characters is that reality has boundaries imagination does not, and fictionalisation forces the writer to understand what drives his characters. Blake, a seriously good poet, is a very eloquent writer, but what insight there is here is partly obscured by Tucker's choppy style. Overall, though, this is an absorbing film and I guess many of us will empathise with Blake's difficulty in coming to terms with a larger than life parent,

WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? (2008) ***1/2 Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth, Juliet Stevenson, Gina McKee, Sarah Lancashire, Elaine Cassidy, Claire Skinner, Matthew Beard, Bradley Johnson. Wonderful father/son drama based on the novel by Blake Morrison (adapted smartly by David Nicholls) about his troubled relationship with his boisterous, yet loving father (Broadbent in one of his best performances to date) that only gets further complicated when his dad is dying and Blake (Firth also equally excellent) trying to come to grips with his conflicted feelings of his youth and present state of mind. Filmmaker Anand Tucker gently yet effectively delivers a humanely decent depiction of the push/pull dynamic of the parent/child bond with truly winning performances by his two stars.