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Thanks to the Internet Movie Database yet again for poster art.
Please note: I saw this movie in pieces, so my review might have been different if I saw it all in one piece.
Saving Grace stars actor Craig Ferguson from TV's The Drew Carey Show, one of my favorite shows. Unfourtanetly, the show's funnier.
Brenda Blethyn plays Grace Trevethyn, a recent widow whose husband jumped out of a plane without a parachute. As one of the old fogies says, "Maybe he went to the bathroom and used the wrong door." One-liners don't really dominate the film, but sometimes they provoke laughter. Anyway, Grace's fellow neighbors do her favors for free, because she's the last to know the humongous amount of debt for her to pay. So she needs to get money fast to save her house.
Her gardener, Matthew (Ferguson), comes up with a plan to get her money. Raise marijuana and sell it. But how will they get it? Matthew's private stash, of course, and then they'll get more from it. Soon the two of them are in over their head, and they expect you to be rolling with laughter.
Blethyn and Ferguson bring a great amount of charm and great acting, but every worker in the film expects your joints to be sore from laughing. Unlike such comedies as The Whole Nine Yards, where it seems the actors don't know they're doing a comedy, this tries too hard to make us laugh and make us feel like "yes, we are doing a comedy, chuckle people". Don't mistake me for not liking this film, it's a fine piece but without any real laughs. And the comedy is uneven. Some of it was high brow comedy, while others were the effects of being stoned.
The runtime, at around 95 minutes, seemed to go by in about an hour, good for a light, airy comedy like this. On the other hand, the ending seemed too unrealistic, not attainable at all. It wasn't so much as too many pratfalls to achieve such an ending (like Barbershop), but just unlikely.
Charm and a light feel makes this worth a little watch if that's what you want, but if you really want a comedy, don't come a-knockin' at this door.
Rated R for drugs and language.
Review Date: October 17, 2002