Our Rating: 2.50
Critics may be inclined to feel a little guilty when raining on this “love parade” of a movie. The British import is so good-natured and so full of goodwill — hardened criminals finding rehabilitation through the art and science of gardening — that who could argue with a group of down-on-their-luck eccentrics scoring an unexpected triumph?
The problem, one that could be seen coming as soon as it was announced that writer-director Joel Hershman (“Hold Me,” “Thrill Me,” “Kiss Me”) was making a film based on a real-life incident inspired by a New York Times article: We’ve been here before, and on more than one occasion.
Blue-collar blokes find something like redemption in the unlikely pursuits of stripping in “The Full Monty” and ballet in “Billy Elliot.” Similar themes come into play in “Saving Grace” (marijuana cultivation) and “Blow Dry” (hairdressing competition). All of the lead characters in these films overcome long odds, not to mention the snickering and questioning of family and friends and 11th-hour reversals, in their efforts to prove something to themselves and the world.
Hershman, an American, unfortunately doesn’t bother varying much from the familiar routine. The setting, though, is a twist: Colin (Clive Owen of “Croupier”), nearing the end of a sentence for a terrible crime not revealed until late in the movie, is a new arrival at a minimum-security prison, an experimental facility where the inmates are allowed to roam woodsy, grassy environs that resemble a college campus.
Colin, a handsome 30-something man of few words and a pro-pensity for turning would-be friends into enemies, eventually warms to the attentions of a wise older inmate, Fergus (David Kelly of “Waking Ned Devine”), a kind, colorful character dying of cancer. The lifer constantly dispenses unwelcome advice — “Make adversity your ally” — to the younger man, and yet the two become friends.
Fergus’ Christmas gift, a packet of flower seeds, yields a patch of purple petals and (insert drum roll here) a cause c?lbre, as the two men plus young robber Tony (Danny Dyer), the big but gentle Raw (Adam Fogerty) and the wrongly convicted Jimmy (Paterson Joseph) are appointed by the warden (Warren Clarke) to create a prison garden.
Their successful efforts attract the attention of celebrity gardener Georgina Woodhouse, and the gardening gang soon has its sites set on a big-time competition, the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, an annual, exclusive contest organized by the Royal Horticultural Society. (In real life, the prisoners won two gold medals at the affair.)
Hershman, following the formula, inserts a tragedy into the plot and gives the film’s main character, Clive, a love interest: He only has eyes for Primrose (Natasha Little), Woodhouse’s pretty, reserved daughter.
That cross-cultural clash, the connection between an eligible young woman of the upper class and a man convicted of murder, is one of the movie’s more compelling elements.
Too bad it gets obscured by all the rebirth-of-the-human-spirit malarkey.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2001.