Touches You

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I just discovered this movie the other day for the first time. I was flipping through the menu on my TV, saw the description and decided to look in. I missed the first few minutes, but what I saw kept me watching.While I can see what the detractors of this film saw, I also think the criticism is a bit harsh. I did a lot of smiling, and laughed out loud many times.While the movie was packed to the rafters with British heavyweights, few brought their reputations to the roles, and the characters could have easily been played by someone with less star power. However, the Hugh Laurie / Joely Richardson combination worked for me, and Tom Hollander was over-the-top hilarious, even more so for me only previously knowing him in roles where he plays an uptight starchy elitist.Sure the dialogue was a little stilted and artificial in places, some of the jokes juvenile, and I can definitely see where some reviewers thought it sounded like they were reading pages of text verbatim, but I didn't walk away from the movie regretting having watched it. I liked how it poked fun at the British, the BBC, babymaking in general, and I respect that it dared to poke fun at the sacred cows of pregnancy problems and infertility.It was a little indelicate a times, downright ridiculous more than once, but overall the movie was strong enough to hold my attention, and I was entertained. Though I wasn't entirely satisfied with the end, I think it was better than taking the easy way out and having Laurie and Richardson walking off into the sunset pushing a pram.Better than average? Absolutely. Funny? You bet. Pompous? Yeah, a little of that too, but not a clunker by any stretch of the imagination. I liked it. Call me crazy, but I'd watch it again.Thanks for reading.

You can tell that this is going to be a joyless experience by the strangled, off-key gurgling of that trite old Buddy Holly tune by none other than Sir Paul (John owed it all to me) MacCartney, the well known chipmunk-cheeked murderer of music. Of course, Joely Richardson in and out of her knickers and simulating sex, even with Hugh (Doc House) Laurie, is enough to sustain most (straight) men's interest for half an hour, and I suppose (straight) women will enjoy Hugh Laurie 'daringly' being the butt of (predictable) masturbation gags for the same length of time. The gag where she slides off her scooter after visiting the gynecologist is the high spot. By then it should have dawned on anyone that this film has no story, beyond the two elements that are bolted on to keep the non-characters alive: 1) Joely Richardson, in spite of having wild sex five times a day, wants to go over the side with a 'dishy' actor, and 2) Hugh Laurie, whose amphetamine intake is never actually disclosed, is eventually stung into writing a first-time smash-hit film script by a poorly written Scots nuisance who ends up directing it with the dishy actor as lead. The fact of its being based on his wife's oh-so-secret diary causes them to split up for a few months. That's it. End of story. The film starts to drag after the gags have run out - Ben Elton's forte is the half-hour sitcom after all - and as the script descends further into trite, turgid cliché after trite, turgid cliché, a few Shakespeare references are thrown in to show just how pretentious the project is, and all the usual Britflick club members are wheeled out to do their party pieces; they even squeeze in Dawn French, the Paul MacCartney of comedy. By the end Joely Richardson's hips begin to look distinctly childbearing. It's particularly annoying that it's about the very special pain of extremely middle-class people, (the 'park' is an enclosed private condo garden), while the views of the film business that are presumably intended to be satirical only communicate a sort of sleazy tedium. Do they have a baby at the end? ***MAJOR SPOILER TO SAVE NINETY MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE*** Elton doesn't say, they just simulate sex in public a lot more. It's a wind-up.

Okay, this was not the Worst Movie Ever Made. But still, it is a too pathetic piece... It drags, it's lame-- even the concept is tired (the old "movie about making a movie thing"-- Been there, done that!)and even if true, it's not enough to make this worth watching. Hugh Laurie is nearly always worth watching-- hell, we'd probably enjoy watching him shave or change his motor oil, but the writing in this is ho-hum, the acting is uneven-- some very, very nice bits indeed, but cojoined with some truly looney characters (Emma Thompson, who I otherwise love, is simply whacked out here) and Mr Bean just doesn't belong in this movie. The film doesn't know if it's a drama or a comedy, or a comic drama or what. It lurches forth and back in tone, sort of keeping the viewer guessing. I think the movie may have been just an honest mistake. The director, after all, had a wife going through IVF at the time. Yes, there is humor in everything (well, most things), but this wasn't a comedy and it wasn't a drama-- It was like a steak and banana milk shake. Steak is fine, bananas are fine, but they don't go together mixed that closely. Is this film worth seeing? Sadly, no. It doesn't offer solace to the infertile, it doesn't offer enough laughs for those for whom infertility isn't a touchy subject, it's just there, and like a pile of dog doo in a meadow, it's best avoided.

I was lucky enough to catch this movie on WE last night and at first, yeah there was a lot of sex in it, but the movie wasn't about that. The movie was about two people in love with each other who desperately wanted a baby. I absolutely loved Joely Richardson as Lucy. Her part was probably the most endearing thing about this movie. Everything she writes in her diary--from the Beatrix Potter to why women feel the need to create life--was so eloquently put. I think infertility is a struggle that a lot of women deal with, but it's not something you hear about everyday. I think this movie was refreshingly honest about approaching this subject and I found myself wiping away tears at certain parts.