Friday 11th June 2010

Grow your own

Director: Richard Laxton
Year: 2007
Stars: Benedict Wong, Eddie Marsan, Omid Djalili, Alan Williams, Philip Jackson

I wasn't expecting much from this (it was on at 7pm on BBC2 in order to give World Cup avoiders something to watch), but I wasn't expecting to be offended by it either.

The film follows a group of (possibly illegal) immigrants who are given allotments in order to help them come to terms with their varying demons. The white, British allotment owners object to this and try to find ways to get them to leave.

Leaving aside the fact that the plot is confused, highly unlikely and doesn't seem to know what it wants to say about immigration (They should all stay? Even the illegal ones? They're all models of society? And what exactly does Paris Hilton have to do with all this?), the director seems to have spent so much time painting immigrants in a positive light, he's forgotten not to be sexist. All the women are, to varying degrees, useless/ annoying/ a bit rubbish/ highly dependent on their menfolk.

Almost all the British characters are also painted in very broad brush strokes - the evil "leader" is properly evil, with no admirable qualities. So why is he liked by anybody at start of the movie, if he's that nasty a person? Picking holes in that level of plot detail, though, is unnecessary. This is just an offensive movie parading as a sweet, easy-to-watch film. Which perhaps it could have been - with a different director, different characters and a different plot.

Rating: 1 out of 5 (it gets 1 because although it made me angry, it at least wasn't as boring as some other films)