Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Emily overload. Lovelorn Owen ( Spike Fearn , centre ) sparks a larger conversation than he ever intended in a scene from the British romantic comedy, ' Finding Emily ', written by Rachel Hirons and directed by Alicia MacDonald . Still courtesy of Universal Pictures .   Working Title is one of the UK’s most prolific film production companies. Since 1994, it is associated with romantic comedies, in particular those written by Richard Curtis, specifically Four Weddings and a Funeral , Notting Hill and Love, Actually . A successful British romantic comedy does not work like its American counterpart. Rather, an all-star cast is assembled, as if for a disaster movie. By the end, at least two of the stars acknowledge their love for one another. The ensemble element is important. We are shown relationships at various stages, contrasting with the plight of the central couple, in order to acknowledge life beyond the ‘happy ending’. The disaster movie analogy is appr...

  British Pakistani writer-director Nida Manzoor makes a confident if repetitive feature debut with her action anti-romantic comedy, Polite Society , which features appealing performances from its broadly unfamiliar multi-racial cast. I wanted to like it more than I did. It has a UK ‘12A’ rating which marks it as suitable for audiences of all ages, though with two scenes of near strangulation of a young woman by an older one, I felt that the film classifiers were surprisingly generous.   The story is told from the point of view of a young martial arts enthusiast, Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) who idolises stunt woman and former Gladiators competitor turned star Eunice Huthart in spite of being told that she should consider being a doctor, one of the film’s main satirical points. Ria is however not the film’s protagonist. Rather it is her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya) who is the centre of the drama. Having quit art college believing that she is not good enough, she falls for a hand...