Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

An Awfully Big Adventure (1994)

Director: Mike Newell

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Newell's follow-up to Four Weddings and a Funeral offers many subtle if somewhat sombre pleasures. Charles Wood's adaptation of Beryl Bainbridge's novel about backstage theatrical life in postwar Liverpool evokes the period's dusty oppressiveness and moral hypocrisies. Cates gives a luminous performance as the starstruck trainee stagehand Stella; and Grant is cast effectively against type as Meredith Potter, the company's cruel, manipulative director who vies for Stella's innocent soul with Rickman's suave, haunted leading man PL O'Hara. When O'Hara is called back to reprise his acclaimed Captain Hook, a complex web of past and present entanglements begins to unravel. Newell's handling of the exterior scenes has a slightly cursory air, but his sharp dramatic focus draws the best from an exceptional ensemble cast. With its flawed characters and disturbingly dark centre, this fragile gem of a movie sparkles with intelligence and glows with feeling.

Author: NF 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Mike Newell

Producer: Hilary Heath, Philip Hinchcliffe

Cast: Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Georgina Cates, Alun Armstrong, Peter Firth, Prunella Scales, Rita Tushingham, Edward Petherbridge, Nicola Pagett, Carol Drinkwater full cast

Duration: 112 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.