there's the feeling that this film was designed and constructed by a committee out of focus-group friendly but disconnected components; they then seemingly accidentally hired some great talent to do some of the work. The script is often funny and sharp, but frequently slumps into sentimentality. A lot of the acting is very good, but Burt Reynolds is mostly helpless: he can't act the part he has been given except for some of the calmer domestic comedy. Acting the part of an actor acting King Lear? No, he's lost. Most things are done very well, the photography and direction are fine and the music only really grates during the prolonged sentimental guff that spoils the flow of the film particularly in the middle and at the end. It's worth watching for some fine comic acting from the English part of the cast, and for some very professional filmmaking too. It's worth fast forwarding through some of the sentiment, and some of the American acting too.

At one point in Shakespeare's King Lear the eponymous character is moved to address the deities thus: you see me hear, you Gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age, wretched in both. This isn't that far off the mark in describing the film a sort of Midsomer Murders as in I died in Midsomer (Stratford, Suffolk) the age would describe the plot which was pushing seventy when Beowulf was a hot ticket, the grief, the misguided decision to fund something like this. It's watchable and it will pass the time if there isn't a Frank Randle retrospective you could be at instead. Just as in what passes for a plot the name of Burt Reynolds will attract a certain percentage of die-hard fans and because they are die-hard fans they'll go away happy. Anyone else will go away looking for a new Bruce Willis entry.

What great fun this is. We laughed a great deal. I shall be buying it for sure. I'm mystified by someone's comment that "villages like this don't exist any more in England. Has that person ever been to England? Or if English, have they never been outside a city? Come on, live where we live and you'll see that village is pretty normal. We have plenty of villages where the village shop hasn't been closed down yet. Even supermarkets aren't perfect.I'd never seen Burt Reynolds in anything before that I can recall and I'd no idea he could be so entertaining - I had visualised him as a typical Hollywood beefcake in tough movies. Well now I'll look out for his movies, or at least any that aren't Hollywood formula thugs and car chases and the like. Nice to see Derek Jacobi, a fav. actor of mine, and how well he played petulance! Everyone else is the typical "characters" of any imaginary village - that doesn't make the real village behind the actors any less real! The guesthouse, oh dear, that bedroom is ghastly. I howled at the scene that got the American actor slung out of the guest house for fornication. It didn't need to be totally original, it was predictable, but it was so well acted that it was completely fresh.Nice to see pieces of Lear too, the Bard needs more "exposure" these days! How I laughed when the American complains that the "script" needs drastic cutting!

A Film that i saw advertised never got to see,but came in the cinemas and went out again straight away.i found it for a fiver in tescos and thought why not, a good casting, reynolds as lear playing with a British tour de force.A wonderful i think piece of British cinema, some great one liners and reynolds doesn't steal the show, he shares it with the pigs and his sterilised hot tub and a wonderful cast who all admitted they were starstruck working with "burt reynolds".even the dog gets some great lines in my opinion watch it, its one of them little gems that i will go on about.with such trash in the last few year being made Indiana jones and the X files ripoff (thank god i didn't buy it or even cinema to view that ) around this film is a tonic to watch.one i can watch again and again i think.thank you "you bunch of amateurs".