Driving Aphrodite (Nia Vardalos)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nearly nine years since we watched the light romantic comedy’ Driving Aphrodite’. I didn’t remember much about it, although it’s a somewhat predictable story. I did recall that there were some cultural references and jokes that we could appreciate after living in a Greek culture for many years.

Nia Vardalos stars as Georgia, a young Greek American woman who is a historian, specialising in Ancient Greece. She has applied for jobs lecturing in American universities, but so far has been unsuccessful. So she’s living in Greece for a while, to work as a tour guide. She finds it quite stressful, as she’s usually given a group with the difficult passengers, the old bus and fairly grim accommodation.

The bulk of the film is about her tour, which she expects to be her last. Her driver Poupi (Alexis Georgoulis) does not appear to speak any English, and her tour group consists of a diverse bunch of people. They include an elderly woman who steals from market stalls, some young women who have recently ended relationships and insist they have given up men; an uptight couple with a sulky teenage daughter; and a late middle-aged man, Irv (Richard Dreyfuss) who tells bad jokes…

Georgia believes that people come to Greece to learn about the culture, and the ancient monuments. So her tours are primarily educational. Her colleague Nico (Alistair McGowan) always gets nicer groups of people and a more modern bus and is popular with the tourists as he takes them for ice creams, shopping tours and to the beach. He gets good reviews while Georgia doesn’t, so she decides that this is going to be her last tour as she doesn’t want to compromise her principles.

However as she gets to know her group, she realises that they’re mostly likeable people with their own problems and griefs. She is persuaded, mainly by Irv, that she needs to lighten up a bit. She’s quite uptight and very keen to stick with her schedule - this contrasts well with Nico’s relaxed, materialistic outlook.

The pace is good, with plenty of low-key humour and a developing romance, even if Georgia gets the wrong idea for a while. There are some sad stories too, and a dramatic climax to the book just as she is beginning to realise that she should be more Greek in her outlook and stop worrying about time and appearances.

It’s not the greatest film, but Richard Dreyfuss as Irv - once I managed to stop thinking of him as Mr Holland - is superb, and Alexis Georgoulis as Poupi does a believable and smooth metamorphosis. Other characters are caricatured but that doesn’t matter at all. Digs are made at several cultures, including Australians whose speech is impossible to understand, and Canadians who really, really don’t want to be thought of as American.

We smiled in a few places, and it made a good film to watch when we were both tired and in need of relaxation.

The rating is 12 in the UK (PG-13 in the US) which seems about right. There’s nothing explicit, but plenty of innuendoes as well as an implied scene; and a great deal of discussion of sex (or the lack of it). No major bad language, and only minor violence, mostly intended humorously.

Recommended to anyone who likes this kind of lightweight romantic comedy with a Greek cultural twist.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Driving Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nearly nine years since we saw the film ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. We vaguely remembered the storyline - that an elderly white woman in the United States, back in the 1950s, employs a black driver - but we had forgotten everything else about it. Well, almost everything. I had recalled that it took me a good five minutes to start understanding the very strong Southern American accents.  But I knew it would be worth watching anyway.

We tried - and failed - to switch on subtitles at the beginning of the film, since, once again, I found it very difficult to understand more than about one word in three in the first few minutes of re-watching this. But it didn’t matter too much.

The story itself is relatively straightforward. Miss Daisy - brilliantly portrayed by Jessica Tandy - is a Jewish widow, living in the state of Georgia. She is such a bad driver that insurance companies will no longer insure her. So her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd) who is a businessman employs a man called Hoke (Morgan Freeman) who is clearly an expert with everything mechanical, as well as an excellent driver.

Miss Daisy doesn’t want a driver, and determines to walk everywhere at first. She insists that she is not prejudiced, and has, for the era, basically a good relationship with her housekeeper and cook Idella (Esther Rolle). But the class consciousness is as strong as that of the upper classes in 18th century Britain. Idella and Hoke can never eat with Miss Daisy, for instance.

Morgan Freeman, as ever, is superb in the role of Hoke. He’s good-natured, and determined to break through the initial hostility displayed. He has a sense of humour, and strong integrity; so there are some quite amusing scenes here and there. But we also see just how difficult it was for people with dark skin in this era; Hoke had never travelled, and had lacked even a basic education as a child.

The story covers a span of twenty-five years, and both the main characters age, Miss Daisy becoming more forgetful and Hoke remaining faithful and strong. There isn’t a great deal of action, although there are some very sad scenes as well as some that are quite uplifting. The point is made that even though Miss Daisy is white and wealthy, and thus privileged in many ways, being Jewish makes her a minority. Gradually she begins to understand some of what Hoke has to cope with daily.

Once my ears had attuned to the strong accents, I was completely immersed in this beautifully made film, which is thought-provoking, revealing, and ultimately - even if it’s a cliche - heartwarming. The rating is U, and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to see a little of what Southern US culture was like in the 1950s and subsequent decades.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Little Women (Saoirse Ronan)

(Amazon UK link)

When the 2019 version of ‘Little Women’ was released, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see it. I have loved the books on which it was based for many years, and thoroughly enjoyed an earlier film adaptation. However it’s many years since I last saw that. The new one, I was told, was updated for a modern audience, and had a somewhat confusing time switch, as well as some scenes that were not in Louisa May Alcott’s original.

However my son gave me the DVD of this film for my birthday a few months ago. It’s quite a long film - over two hours - so we had to find an evening when we had more than ninety minutes available. We finally sat down to watch it last night, and were hooked almost from the start.

Saoirse Ronan is excellent as Jo March. Having said that, it took me a couple of scenes to accept her as Jo. I had somehow always thought of her as having very dark hair. But she has just the right personality. The film starts with Jo nervously knocking on the door of an editor, submitting a short story for newspaper publication. She’s told to write something more gothic and dramatic, and returns to the boarding house where she’s living.

This part of the story is in the book ‘Good Wives’, the second volume of (or sequel to) ‘Little Women’, and as the film moves forward it is interspersed with flashback scenes from seven years earlier. In the earlier scenes, Jo is just fifteen. Her older sister Meg (Emma Watson) is sixteen; their younger sisters Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh) respectively thirteen and twelve.

I was a tad confused at first about which scenes were which. Had I not been familiar with the story, I think I might have got lost. I realised quickly that the hairstyles changed between the two eras, and that some characters looked older. Jo succeeds, more-or-less, in demonstrating the difference between fifteen and twenty-two, although she doesn’t change all that much. That’s not a problem, as it fits with her character.

Emma Watson is, in our opinion, the most skilled at this.  She plays Meg as both a young married woman of twenty-three, alternated with a sixteen-year-old girl who dreamed of romance. Both are believable. We were less impressed with Amy who never looks twelve, although Florence Pugh plays the character of Amy well.

Meryl Streep has a lesser part as Aunt March, and does it brilliantly, as one would expect. She manages to look really very old in the later scenes. And we were extremely impressed, too, with Laura Dern, who plays ‘Marmee’. I had never had much of an image of this unusual American women; I think this portrayal is exactly right.

The story is of the girls’ growing up, of Meg’s falling in love; of Laurie - their neighbour - being their best friend and thinking himself in love with Jo. It’s also about Jo’s literary struggles and successes, and about general family life. There’s quite a bit of squabbling, and the rivalry between Jo and Amy more marked than I recall from the book. But it works extremely well.

My husband has not read the books and didn’t remember having seen an earlier version of the film, but he had no trouble understanding the story, and also liked it very much. The pace was good, the scenery and costumes excellent, and despite veering significantly from the books in places, I thought it an excellent adaptation.

There are some very interesting extras, too, including a ‘making of’ documentary, where we were surprised as just how many of the cast were not American.

Very highly recommended, so long as you don’t mind when a film version of a classic book takes several deviations from the original.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews