It must be very difficult to carry a film on the basis of one performance but Timothy Spall does it in style.
The story is simple and nudged along by Timothy Spall's subtle brand of humour and clever nuances. Mostly my rating is about his ability to carry an otherwise underfunded and meatless story.
We never got the sense of where he was, no major cities which he must have passed through, just Scottish countryside which was where the majority of the filming was. I didn't realise what age he was playing till well into the movie as he started off more sprightly than he finished, this could have been deliberate to show he was tiring from the journey and progressively getting sicker. The flashback scenes either showed him and his wife as newly married (or just prior) or old age getting the cancer diagnosis. With more flashbacks showing them in early to middle age it would have shown a deeper meaningful relationship and a full life which it didn't.
The constant befriending of a younger generation felt contrived, mostly they just wouldn't be that interested. So there was a cliched driven story that came across as disingenuous.
Overall an easy story, a Sunday afternoon inoffensive movie and I think we could use that in this day and age, so a 5 for Timothy Spall's superior acting and keeping me watching to the end.
The story is simple and nudged along by Timothy Spall's subtle brand of humour and clever nuances. Mostly my rating is about his ability to carry an otherwise underfunded and meatless story.
We never got the sense of where he was, no major cities which he must have passed through, just Scottish countryside which was where the majority of the filming was. I didn't realise what age he was playing till well into the movie as he started off more sprightly than he finished, this could have been deliberate to show he was tiring from the journey and progressively getting sicker. The flashback scenes either showed him and his wife as newly married (or just prior) or old age getting the cancer diagnosis. With more flashbacks showing them in early to middle age it would have shown a deeper meaningful relationship and a full life which it didn't.
The constant befriending of a younger generation felt contrived, mostly they just wouldn't be that interested. So there was a cliched driven story that came across as disingenuous.
Overall an easy story, a Sunday afternoon inoffensive movie and I think we could use that in this day and age, so a 5 for Timothy Spall's superior acting and keeping me watching to the end.