A cutesy BBC TV movie of Roald's Dahl's children book, starring two titanic thespians, Mr. Hoffman and Dame Ms. Dench, it is a life-affirming romance of old age, brandishes the never-too-late-to- fall-in-love trope but outranks it with a more high-minded love-her-even-she-doesn't-love-me magnanimity, but in the end, it relents from its love-lorn tenor with a mutually love-at-first-sight happenstance.Mr. Henry Hopper (Hoffman), moons over his neighbor one story below Mrs. Lavinia Silver (Dench), who has a pet tortoise named Alfie, but worries about its stalled growth. To win her heart, a habitually halting Mr. Hopper fabricates an incantation which he named "Esio Trot" (of Bedouin extraction) and declares that through the magic (thrice a day before meals, specifically, Ms. Silver's meals), Alfie will grow twice as big within one month, which Lavinia accepts with alacrity, she certainly is not the brightest gal in the building (but the heart wants what the heart wants). So Mr. Hopper expends his savings and time in purchasing legions of tortoises with various sizes, so that he can secretively exchange them according to their weight with their predecessor, to conjure up the weight-growing process which predictably will lead to a backfire when bills finally being spilled through a third-wheel played by Cordery with utter chutzpah. There is hearty charm and warmth in the tall-tale, and some actions too (a septuagenarian Hoffman hanging on a make-shift ladder outside his apartment), chiefly, this adaptation pivots on a good-natured show-down between Hoffman's introvert ineptness and Dench's effusive sprightliness, to paper over the story's implausibility and its rather slipshod production design (too garish in its fairy-tale-like artificiality), and James Corden, to significantly lower the average age of the cast, assumes the job as an eloquent fourth-wall-breaking raconteur, as well as a slightly mindless father.Steeped in Louis Armstrong's repertoire, ESIO TROT (literally "tortoise", spelt backwards, which is the linchpin of the incantation, though its logic linked to this tardy breed is a head-scratcher), is coyly nostalgic in its mawkishness being a twilight love story based on a whopper cannot even get a free pass in one's dotage, but it is so rare a movie dedicated itself to that neglected sphere of elder people's love life, garnished by two winsome performances from its eminent dab-hands, it is a delicate amuse-gueule, as often as not, can muzzle those lenient-hearted from bad-mouthing its saccharine overtone.referential point: Dustin Hoffman's QUARTET (2012), 6.0/10

Esio Trot is a wonderful book, and makes me want to shout out in glee every time I read it, Roald Dahl's Esio Trot the TV Movie is a homage to the book. Starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as Mr Hoppy and Mrs Silver, Esio Trot is a charming film and makes your heart lighten with joy as one tortoise brings Mr Hoppy and Mrs Silver closer together. James Corden plays a brilliant role in narrating the hectic story, and does it very well. Using his daughter (In the film) to narrate alongside him. This works very well and is a key aspect of the film. This film is suitable for a human being- any person. It is guaranteed to make you happy.

This is a very curious movie. Kind of a children's film for adults. Based on a story by the wonderful Roald Dahl and co-written by the excellent filmmaker Richard Curtis, it's almost cartoonish in its approach. I felt Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman are well cast as a vivacious retired midwife, Mrs Silver, and a very shy, lonely American retiree, Mr Hoppy, who live one above the other in an apartment block. Dustin's character wants to win the heart of Judi, so he sets out to grant her wish that her tortoise, Alfie, will grow bigger. He does this by secretly winching Alfie out of her garden, and replacing him with a slightly bigger tortoise, and then replacing that tortoise, and so on until 'Alfie' - which is who Judi's character believes he still is - is the desired weight. The whole story is narrated straight to camera by the wonderful James Corden, playing their neighbour with a lot of wit and a little cynicism. The movie would be good for someone stuck in hospital or sick in bed at home, because it's very undemanding. Other reviewers say the Dustin character is deceptive, but actually Judi's character isn't perfect, either -- she can't accept Alfie just as he is, and she also can't see that her neighbour adores her. And Dustin doesn't kill off the tortoises he replaces: he keeps them all in his increasingly crowded apartment. The message of this film is that if you love someone, you should tell them directly, and not waste time, because trying to win their heart in indirect ways can create all sorts of chaos, and ultimately you can miss out. Also that it's never too late to fall in love, which is kind of nice.

Mr Hoppy, a shy, ageing American plant lover, lives in the flat above Mrs Silver, a rather ebullient retired midwife who buys a tortoise for company. Mr Hoppy falls in love with her but, crippled with shyness, develops a plan to win her heart by substituting ever-larger tortoises to satisfy her worries about the original's slow rate of growth.This rather daft and whimsical story by Roald Dahl is adapted into a rather daft and whimsical TV film by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer. There isn't too much here by way of laughing out loud (Judi Dench has one short but hysterical piece of dialogue towards the end), but there is a lot of smiling and a fair amount of chuckling. And there are two delightful and touching performances from Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the tortoise-linked couple, both of whom deliver performances of far greater integrity and subtlety than the slightness of the material would suggest.