Terence Stamp struggles old-manfully against the dead weight of a schmaltzy script. Photo / Supplied
So toe-curlingly sentimental that it should come with a warning for diabetics, this appallingly anodyne British drama would have forced Noel Coward to reconsider his famous utterance "extraordinary how potent cheap music is".
The two leads, fine actors both, struggle valiantly in the Sisyphean task of lifting the script's dead
weight. Redgrave, who manages to light up the screen as she invests the tiniest gesture with an almost unbearable pathos, has the better of it, since she exits around the film's mid-point; for Stamp, escape is a long way off, beyond a third-act crisis and a triumph as implausible as it is predictable.
The bastard child of Young@Heart and As It Is In Heaven, the film has Stamp as Arthur, the curmudgeonly husband of terminally ill Marion, whose main joy in what's left of her life is the local senior citizens' choir.
Arthur doesn't approve - he thinks the effort tires her out too much - and the teacher, Elizabeth (Arterton, so affectedly and self-consciously pretty you feel like slapping her) tries to charm Arthur into taking part.
If you don't know what happens next (the title is a clue), you haven't watched enough bad films, but I will spoil nothing for you by saying that Arthur is an assemblage of every old-bugger cliche you've ever seen.
