Some good people in it.There is hope out there, somewhere.....I remember Dennis from Cider House Rules, but I don't think I've seen him elsewhere? Cricket doesn't have the movies made about it, like Baseball, or American Football (or even soccer). There were some feature length films made back in the 1950's, I think, but nothing since..... I wonder why that is? Maybe something to do with the English themselves and how they see Sport? Maybe.......... but Australians, don't see Sport in a similar way at all........... they're fiercely competitive, about ANY sport, and they don't make Sporting films either..... Any ideas out there?

If you want to serve jerk pork with schmaltz, rent this movie for dinner viewing. Between Emily Woof's commendable, but unbelievable, attempt at a Yiddish accent and Eve Stewart's nostalgic production design, I started groaning early. This potentially interesting story about prejudice becomes a parody of real life early on. The same old messages about how dysfunctional behavior on the part of new arrivals in an established culture is really charming and enriching. Political correctness gone idiotic. The boys are all cutesy. The girls are all darling. The immigrants are all determined to be jolly and, of course, are always wiser than the people around them. This movie feels like a propaganda film or a commercial from start to finish. The plot is boring. The condescension infuriating. The thematic simplicity annoying.

"Wondrous Oblivion" is a film that has as its motive one of the most boring sports out there (at least for those who don't play it) – cricket. Thankfully, Paul Morrison's second feature, after the award winning "Solomon and Gaenor" (1999), is not about cricket at all.We are given a coming of age story of a Jewish boy, David (Sam Smith), born in the family of two Holocaust survivors in the 1950s England: Victor (Stanley Townsend), a Polish émigré, and a very young Ruth (Emily Woof), coming from Germany. The boy has an empowering passion for cricket, obvious from his massive card collection of cricket celebrities. However, he is totally rubbish at it. His destiny is to change when a Jamaican émigré family comes next door, and sets up an improvised cricket court. Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) teaches the boy the craftsmanship of the sport, and becomes a close friend of David.All seems a very familiar bad-sportsman-turns-great story, but Morrison's script is ingenious enough not to fall in the stereotypical Hollywood film-making. The boy doesn't end up the great sportsman that we all wish him to be, but learns something greater, something more important in the process. And this is the 'wondrous oblivion' the author intended to deliver… The 1960s as a whole becomes a decade of surprising changes and animosity, and yet all characters seem to remain static in their conception of their beliefs.This is a good film, and it is worth seeing for the original cinematography and a moving performance from Emily Woof ("Passion", "The Full Monty"), which steals the whole film. Watch out for the dance scene with Lindo, which is dominated both by passion, and religious taboos, and it is surprisingly sexy. The only three problems in the movie are the simplicity with each the Holocaust theme is being treated, the poor knowledge of Jewish faith, as well as the stereotypical two-dimensionality of the entire supporting cast. But this applies only for a picky audience."Wondrous Oblivion" is one of those films that one cannot dislike, or at least loathe. Pacing, beautiful, and quite funny really.

This is one of the best films about the immigrant experience in the UK that I've seen in a while.It starts off appearing to be about a very English-looking German Jewish boy who's family are ultra-assimilationist and who wants nothing more than to succeed at the most English of sports, Cricket.As it unfolds it takes in the experiences of some of the first West Indians to come to England, and are much more talented at cricket but doomed to suffer the depradations of little Englanders by virtue of their high melanin levels.The complex racial issues that ensue are handled in a way that's sensitive and believable, as long as you can believe that the young jewish boy really is jewish, and not the scion of some old anglo-Norman family. The period detail is pretty spot on as well, though the use of colourised pathe footage slightly jars with the overall aesthetic of the film.Mercifully, you don't have to be able to understand cricket to get this film, just appreciate how difficult it can be to live in a strange country