I agree heartily with all the reviewers here (except "disappointed") because this is a GREAT BRITSH FILM for which the critics have not given hardly enough credit. I am glad I didn't listen to their "disappointment" and went to see it anyway. Sometimes it is critics that are the disappointment! The acting was tremendous. The setting of India was beautiful and perfect. The theatre was full and as most people have already said here, everyone was laughing out loud. It was like a great and funny and cleansing session at a cinema/therapist,that just washed over you, so touching were all the emotions and insights, so real to life ,you could not believe they were acting.
I read one newspaper critic who said the characters didn't have enough depth. Well, no, it was a two hour movie, silly, and what you got was a vignette of 7 real lives, each of them facing the reality of old age in their own way.
How wonderful to have a real movie about real issues that addresses them with humour and leaves you feeling uplifted. And how refreshing to have a film by and for the mature and senior members of society. To me the whole idea and effect of this movie is to fly in the face of the Western idea we have of old age somehow being something pitiful, to be feared, and if possible, to be glossed over, fixed up and avoided, so you can remain as young, powerful and appealing to your very last day, as possible.The movie opens up all these ideas to question and I am sure left many, like me, pondering. Why are over 60's in this country called Old Age Pensioners, when no self-respecting American would allow that? They are "Senior" Citizens over there(note the difference). Why don't we look after and respect our elders? Why does the extended family work perfectly well in countries like Italy, Spain, Greece, India, but is a rarity here? And who is responsible for ignoring or marginalizing a whole generation of baby boomers who lived through and oversaw one of the biggest transformations in society ever? They were the generation that believed in a Brave New World, and many of them still do.
A society that doesn't value the wisdom and experience of its elders is without foundation.Young and old,"every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole". Go and see this movie and think about it. And take your family. Great stuff.
