Finding Your Feet
On the eve of retirement a middle class, judgmental snob discovers her husband has been having an affair with her best friend and is forced into exile with her bohemian sister who lives on an impoverished inner-city council estate.
Cast
Imelda Staunton – Sandra
Timothy Spall – Charlie
Celia Imrie – Bif
David Hayman – Ted
Joanna Lumley – Jackie
Witty but Shitty
Jesus Christ. What a load of crap. I was quite surprised at the lack of comedy value in this film, especially as it was laced with a number of popular British actors recognized for their involvement in some highly comical film and television programmes (apart from Spall – I just can’t make him out, is he funny or not?).
I had glazed over for most of this film, acknowledging what was happening in front of me – but not appreciating any element of it. During a good film I tend to admire the budget used and set locations. The casting and the script. The effort gone into producing such a thing. But I admired absolutely nothing during Finding Your Feet, it just seemed like a group of older actors pushing the chairs back at a script-reading workshop – getting up – and improvising various scenarios.
On a plus, one or two scenes are quite funny as Imrie delivers the goods as per usual. The actress never fails to give a wholesome performance which bleeds excellent humour, she’s a very witty woman. Thank god she was part of the cast or I probably would have walked out of this film.
Finding Your Feet is a bite-sized feature perfect for daytime TV. The sort of thing you’d catch on Channel 4 after Deal or No Deal: nowhere near the scale of a Hollywood smash, but something to fill an hour or so whilst you have dinner. It’s average, basically. That said, some older viewers might love it as I noticed a high percentage of the cinema audience were well over 50. And there was a lot of reaction from them during funny moments (especially one of Lumley’s genius one-liners). In fact, these moments made the film almost satyrical with such humour and reminded me of when I watched Death of Stalin – nowhere near as funny as that but similar atmosphere in the cinema.
Sorry guys, nothing else to say about this one.
Ricky's Film Reviews 