Cold Comfort Farm (1995)

This movie is based on a fantastic book but it is also worthy to hold the title, "Cold Comfort Farm" on it's own. Rarely are films as good as the book they come from (especially when the book is a classic - as this one is) but this movie can stand up beside the literature from whence it sprang "as a distant orb". Thus it gets my 10 out of 10 rating. The story of a young, single woman in upper British society who doesn't really know what to do with herself. So she decides to go and live/inflict herself on some distant relatives on "Cold Comfort Farm". Why? "Because they sound interesting" she concludes upon reading their response to her letter. Let the weirdness, ridiculousness and laughter begin. But it will also need a good dose of kindness and sensitivity, which is woven liberally in between the hilarity. Our heroine (played by the ever fresh Kate Beckinsale) ends up changing everyone's life for the better and in the end, her own as well. But this is NOT heavy drama. This story is for pure fun and those wanting a good time, the line starts here. And let me prepare you, there are so many great phrases that are entrenched in the true to life events that you will definitely want to view this movie with several friends. The phrases will remain "in" jokes and be quoted by all in attendance for ... ever (as it was in the case of my family). The great dialogue makes you laugh, ponder and try to apply it to any and every situation from there after. But remember no matter what you do, don't look in the wood shed. Because I saw something nasty in the wood shed. Or was it the garage? Or the barn? Or the bicycle shed? ~~~ by Laura-Lee

Flora Poste is an aspiring novelist whose idea of writing seems to comprise of stealing bits from famous authors and scribbling them in her notebook,presumably trusting to her muse for inspiration in cobbling them together.Not unlike then Miss Stella Gibbons who borrows from sources as diverse as Austen and Lawrence to produce "Cold Comfort Farm".Her novel's saving grace is that it is clever (but not clever - clever)and very funny. Mis Poste is an orphan trying to exist on £100 a year allowance whilst awaiting literary inspiration. She goes to live with relatives in rural Sussex,the Starkadders,who run the eponymous "Cold Comfort Farm". There is a Chaucerian vulgarity to their personal habits and jovial disregard of middle class morals which discomfits Miss Poste and she decides to lift them up a peg or two,to "help" them whether or not they want it - a bit like "Amelie",in fact. Every literary cliché about rural England is cheerfully exploded,the lusty farmer's sons,the hell and brimstone preacher,the dark secret,Miss Gibbons mocks them all - but in a good - natured way. Mr J.Schlesinger,master of the British New Wave fifty years ago,manages the difficult task of making everything seem totally O.T.T.whilst maintaining a firm grasp. Miss K.Beckinsale is perfect as Miss Poste: a character never actually meant to be believable,merely lovable.Like a sophisticated Fairy Godmother. Mr Freddie Jones and Miss Eileen Atkins avoid Grand Guignol by a thoroughly enjoyable hairsbreadth. My late aunt had a copy of "Cold Comfort Farm" which was published whilst she was in her early twenties.She recommended it to me as a teenager but I decided it wasn't cool enough for a man who dug Gerry Mulligan and Shorty Rogers. Clearing out her house,I rescued just two of her books,one she had won as a school prize and "Cold Comfort Farm". I found it just as cool as Gerry and Shorty.I just wish she was still around so I could tell her.

This is Kate Beckinsale back when she acted instead of did action movies for big bucks. Although I wish they hadn't left out some of the characters and changed some things around from the original book, this movie kept the whacky spirit of Stella Gibbon's novel.For instance, in the novel there were a host of other Starkadders being mistreated by Aunt Ada Doom who Flora helps, Rinnit marries the author Mr. Mybug (Myerburg!) played by Stephen Frye, not Ruben, and the farm isn't actually in bad shape. Ruben has been cooking the books he shows to Aunt Ada so that he can use the money to improve the farm.I have only been able to get my hands on one of the two sequel novels that Stella Gibbons wrote about these same characters, Conference at Cold Comfort Farm and it is not quite as good. But you do get to find out what happened to some of the characters after WWII. Someday I hope to get a copy of Christmas at cold comfort farm to read.Whacky good fun and I like the message that people should follow their own dream (even nutjob religious maniac Cousin Amos, brilliantly played by Sir Ian McKellan) rather than be a slave to a tyrant. It is unrealistic that Aunt Ada can be redeemed so easily but I like the way she was played, as having an epiphany when the American film Czar Mr. Neck asks her if the nasty thing in the woodshed saw her.Excellent movie all around.

"Child, child. If you come to this doomed 'ouse, what is there to save you?"- Judith Starkadder in COLD COMFORT FARM.The "child" in question is the lone offspring of one Robert Poste (deceased) and, as we are soon to discover, Poste's progeny, Flora, is hardly one in need of saving. Orphaned in her budding womanhood, nettled by the golden orb of an unrealized literary career, Flora strikes out from the discerning (or snobbish) urban sophistication of London ( leaving behind her good friend Mary and Mary's invaluable manservant, Sneller) and heads for the bucolic splendor of the Sussex countryside to lodge with her relatives, the Starkadders, and find herself.She finds instead: a muck-begrimed tumbledown estate wherein resides a ready-for- Hollywood womanizer (Cousin Seth), an estate-coveting farmer (Cousin Reuben), a daffy romantic (Cousin Elfine), a too-loving mother (Cousin Judith), a 'vengeful god', proselytizing father (Cousin Amos), and an iron-willed matriarch (Greataunt Ada Doom). There's also a smattering of Lambsbreath (Adam) and a smidgen of Hawk-Monitor (Dick).Inside the Starkadder fold Flora encounters a resistance to dish washing modernity (the twig versus the hand mop); the rumor of an unmentionable misdeed once perpetrated against her father; the oft-cited permanence of the Starkadders on their environs; and the matriarch's frequently mentioned trauma after having witnessed a particularly odious occurrence inside the outdoor log pile storage facility ("...something nasty in the woodshed"). Undaunted, Flora presents a cool brow and an almost impervious demeanor plus an extremely persuasive power to influence. Within COLD COMFORT FARM, where high fashion and applied scientific reasoning smash headlong into arrested sociological development and stunted personal/ familial growth, tear-inducing laughter is the order of the day.As mentioned in the comments of others, Ms. Beckinsale, clad in her natty period togs and radiating a winsome, unflappable aura (while also projecting a strangely prepubescent vibe), hasn't had as good a role since Flora. Meanwhile, those master thespians, Freddie Jones, Ian McKellan, and the inimitable Eileen Atkins nearly go mad with delight as they burrow gleefully into their characters. Rufus Sewell's Seth smolders hilariously while Stephen Fry's Mybug, "soaked in nature's fecund blessing", blusters uproariously. This sort of comedy of manners and cultural collision required an intelligent, perceptive and witty director. John Schlesinger (DARLING, 1965) fit the bill gloriously.