Grandma and her boys

Wednesday 2 January 2013

I went to the cinema

Yesterday evening  five of us all on the "grey side" went to see Quartet...


 
Before I went I kind of had this idea it’d be .... The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2: A pleasant but blandly conventional, mostly forgettable comedy starring Maggie Smith that you won’t really enjoy unless you’ve drawn up a will and started paying attention to funeral insurance commercials on afternoon TV.

My impression was wrong! It is not bland. It is lovely. Like Marigold was ho-hum maybe because it was a film about old people whose problems didn’t really extend beyond being old ... Quartet is a film about old people – cute, charming old people – whose problems are timeless.
It’s set in a retirement home (which, OK, not so timeless), but not one that’s all grim loneliness and dusty blankets and fogies staking themselves good spots at the staring window. Beecham House is the most awesome retirement home ever!

It’s a posh English  Mansion and the residents are jolly good former musician sorts and the staff are tasty young bits of crumpet. You want to be in this retirement home when you’re decrepit.
The residents include Reg, Wilf and Cissy (Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins), retired members of an operatic quartet renowned for their rendition of a Verdi classic. Maggie Smith is Jean, the fourth member of their quartet, who moves into Beecham House.
Hey, say Wilf and Cissy, how about the quartet reunites to perform that song everyone likes? Except Jean refuses to perform because she’s afraid of embarrassing herself because she’s old, and Reg refuses to perform with Jean because they used to be married and she cheated on him. Will they put aside their arguments and put on a show that will raise enough money to save the cash-strapped Beecham House?
Yes. Of course they do. Obviously.

It was a great film and I throughly enjoyed it ... may be I could relate to closely to it.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like a good movie Laurie.xx

helen-mary said...

I really enjoyed Marigold Hotel and will check out Quartet, probably when the DVD is released. Glad to know you liked it.