Life Is Short: British Whimsy

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries are here , here, here, here, here, here here, here, here and here.

This is a cutesy slice of cheese, a quaint but melancholy story of an old woman who parks the van she lives in at various places along a street in a haughty neighborhood of London in the early 1970s. Maggie Smith plays the bug-eyed eccentric. Alex Jennings (calling to mind a young Ronnie Corbett) portrays the playwright who is telling the story, Alan Bennett, and for some reason the writer appears in duplicate -- one who lives the life, one who chronicles it -- both played by Jennings.

If Bennett (through director Nicholas Hytner, nine years from "The History Boys") has a point to make, he doesn't adequately convey it in the first third of the movie. Alas, it was there that I bailed. Perhaps the soothing subtleties were lost on me, but this retro quirk don't work.

Title: THE LADY IN THE VAN
Running Time: 104 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  47 MIN
Portion Watched: 45%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 53 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Blogged about movies and went to bed.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 40-1