I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Disappointing and unnecessary redo of the Forster tale. Elaine Cassidy doesn't come close to Helena Bonham Carter's charm and winsomeness and without that the whole enterprise is doomed from the start. The only actor to perform with any distinction is Sophie Thompson who makes a fine Cousin Charlotte, different from Maggie Smith but fun in her fluttery way. The other cast members, fine actors though they may be in other places, are adrift here dwarfed by the memory of classic performances. Even considered separately the production seems flat and airless with the scenes following one another but without a sense of cohesion. To top it all off the ending is disastrous. Really a one star affair, the second is for Sophie Thompson but she's not enough to save this wretched mess. Watch the far superior original instead!

I enjoyed the Helena Bonham-Carter version of this film far more. It captured the humor and romance of the story. It had some light in it. It was alive as any story should be. Even with its flaws, as in the rather lethargic portrayal of George by Julian Sands, it still made you feel more than this version.Now to this newer film... The actors tried, you can see that. But it was as if the characters, scenes, music, and plot points were all pieces from some kit that had been assembled without instructions and with some special touches meant to make it prettier in the eyes of the assembler. The mood was dark, scenes that should have been funny were serious, scenes that were serious were either clumsy or Stygian in their gloominess. Conversations were awkward and forced. Explanations were few and both plot and character development were hasty and scanty as a result. All to make room, no doubt, for the artistic vision of the director or writer, whoever we have to blame. For, as others have said here, we have as our constant companion an older Lucy who is not living life to the fullest as the movie tries hard to discuss at one point, but revisiting places where she did her living. The places are dark, changed, almost black-and-white in their mood. The familiar "indoors in the daytime with the lights switched off" feeling is present. And if the place had been bright and full of people it would still have been poor Lucy remembering how she got her husband who... ah, here's a spoiler for you...The romantic ending arrives but leaps, mind you, from Lucy running into a pond thinking to save a drowning George (who apparently was just having a nice float face down in a murky pond) straight to a sex scene in Italy which is just long enough to make you cry, "Good grief, they're nude!" before it cuts to the "after" sequence which always involves people laying under white sheets, chuckling to one another. And once they have you in full apprehension of a joyous happy ending (in spite of making no effort to explain the process of it), a quick artsy-craftsy shot of the beautiful sky outside fades, amid strains of wailing operatic soprano, to a shot of a stone dead British soldier lying, face frozen in a last look of horror, on the edge of a trench as the night flashes with bomb blasts. Yes, it's George, who after all that grinning which seemed to be his main job in the film, has fallen prey to the warmongers and left his Lucy to mourn.If they were thinking to bring poignancy to the story I think they overdid it. There was too much bitter for the sweet to compete. And to save time for such rubbish, they made sure we hardly got to know the characters, and as a result, much of the plot, since their motivations drove the story as is usual with Forster's books.The only good thing I can say about it is that I don't think there was anything in it that was so good that it was wasted in a bad movie. It all pretty much tanked.

James Ivory's screen version of "A Room with a View" has always been one of my favourite films, (I'm a hopeless romantic; now I'm out of the closet), so I approached this television version with some trepidation and for the first twenty minutes or so I was sure I was right; they should leave well enough alone. But then the power of the original novel began to exert itself. And so did the casting. I was never that happy with Helena Bonham-Carter and Julian Sands as the young lovers in the Ivory version, (she simpered; he was gorgeous in a big, dumb hunk kind of way but Sands was also a shade too upper-crust for a working class lad). Here Elaine Cassidy caught the rebellious spirit of Lucy from the off while Rafe Spall seemed to me to be authentically working-class while his real-life father Timothy was simply magnificent in the role of his screen father, Mr Emerson. Laurence Fox, too, was far more recognizably human and less of a caricature than Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil Vyse. Best of all, in the crucial role of Miss Barlett, Sophie Thompson succeeded in banishing all memories of Maggie Smith and made the part her own. Thompson could now write an encyclopedic textbook on how to play nervous embarrassment. So the casting worked and the first hurdle of replicating a beloved original was overcome.But there were three other crucial differences between this version and Ivory's. Firstly the story is told in flashback as Lucy returns to Florence on her own in 1922. Why is she alone? The clue, of course, is in the year and the ending makes explicit what we may have already guessed. Secondly there is a coda, very nicely done, that seems to set out a happy future for her and thirdly, perhaps you may think unnecessarily, scriptwriter Andrew Davies introduces a sub-text that implies that both Cecil and Mr Beebe, the kindly, match-making vicar played camply by Simon Callow in the Ivory version and by Mark Williams in a much more restrained way here, are gay. Blink and you may well miss the inference and may wonder exactly what Mr Beebe is referring to when later he says that Cecil is not the marrying kind. It is, of course, only one reading into the behaviour of both these characters but it certainly goes some way to explaining the character of Beebe, if not always Cecil. And it ensures that this adaptation is not simply a slavish copy of the James Ivory version.Did I prefer it to Ivory's version? Well, not exactly but it held me in its velvet glove of a grip right to the end and finally it moved in a really quite unexpected fashion.

Oh dear. When it comes to remakes, or "re-imaginings" or whatever the current vogue is for churning out an old favourite with a new cast, Sir Michael Caine said it best: only remake the flops. It makes perfect sense: if you fail then everyone thinks one can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but if you succeed then it's bouquets all round.But that remaking a classic like James Ivory's film of E. M. Forsters's novel of Edwardian manners is folly of the highest order was borne out last night with this limp and unengaging ITV drama.Wrapping the action in a clumsy flashback device robbed the story of any freshness or spontaneity, and it quickly became a lot like watching a school play version of one of your favourite films.There were some interesting touches - Mark WIlliams' closeted Mr Beebe picking up Florentine rentboys would have brought a blush to Forster's cheeks. Also amusing were Mr Beebe's blushes as George Emerson and Freddie Honeychurch shed their clothes for the famous bathing scene. But in order the find the gold there was a good deal of dross.Comparing any actress to Dame Maggie Smith is unfair, but Sophie Thompson really came off badly - her Miss Bartlett nothing more than the same irritating ticks and tricks she always uses. There was no real person there. Laurence Fox's far-too-handsome Cecil Vyse seemed to be reading his lines from a cue card and far more interested in his clothes than in Lucy.All in all it makes one deeply fearful for adapter Andrew Davies' upcoming version of Brideshead Revisited.