LW-08854

There's no denying the power of this true story and this programme obviously had a big impact. I also thought the cast were generally pretty good, Toby Jones is always terrific, even when he spends half the run length in his dressing gown on the telephone to people it still works well. What I did start to roll my eyes at was how contrived and cliched a lot of the dialogue was and the general script overall. Toby Jones sounds less like a real man than someone reading a Hollywood script, its just way too polished. Character introductions are handled pretty clumsily with huge exposition dumps like its the Da Vinci Code or something. "Yes i know who you are, this is your job title, these are your previous job titles, these are your personality traits." The delivery of key revelations also has to take place while characters are always driving, laptops randomly have internet connections in the middle of nowhere, I guess it would be too realistic for people to be you know at work or home when these things happen.

The court showdown of course involves the counsel representing the post office to be made a fool of time after time after time by the postmasters giving evidence, while those for the post office of course squirm. Oh dear..... Paula Vennels is constantly appearing on the TV too to promote the post office, it's just not remotely believable to think the news channels were that interested in interviewing her constantly at the time.

I do admire the intent of the programme but unfortunately it's just riddled with tropes and cliches that made me cringe so much. Horizon itself here is not so much a piece of software as a piece of hardware with a sinister blue light and creepy music.....What were they thinking? I was half expecting it to give an evil laugh or something as the camera slowly panned in on it.... Talk about dumbing down.

All in all a pretty lacklustre movie. The opening naration goes on and on and on, there's little logic to the story, its all pretty confused, the whole child army was a bit ridiculous but the tone is just too dour and serious, its such a mismatch. The Scottish accents are awful and often come and go. They also waste a lot of good comedic actors giving them nothing funny really to work with. Some of the cgi and fight choreography is especially bad, you have to remind yourself this came after movies like the Matrix and Kill Bill. Everything is just so slow and laboured, you just loose all interest in the plot. I'm really not suprised this flopped at the time it came out. Its not got any better with age either.

A fairly amusing film but one which also frustrates slightly in its shallowness. The film has some good moments, a few great moments of comedy in fact and satire but to me it just had a hollow ring to a lot of it with one of the two lead characters who is possibly the hollowest shallowest character ever put to film. To me it could have been even better if we were properly behind the main character rather than feeling distanced from one of them.

The film looks absolutely gorgeous with that bright 1950s colour look, the costumes and makeup all look wonderful.

The writing is also a little uneven with the resolution of certain conflicts feeling slightly contrived.

All in all though this is a pleasant watch and certainly not in any way challenging or annoying, just a bit of a fun.