This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A Brilliant Conflict

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

A piece of nostalgia for anyone, like me, over 50. We remember a country like this. But anyone under 30 might think that this film is about some mythical Golden Age. Was there really such a time? A time when a milkman and his wife, a clerk, could afford the mortgage on a three bedroom house in Wimbledon Park? A time when their child, if clever enough, could go to grammar school, and then onto University, without shouldering a crippling debt? A time when social welfare and housing were improving, and political parties vied with each other to better the lives of ordinary people.If you think that perhaps the country was in a better financial state back then, you'd be wrong. We were in huge debt after the second world war, with debt to GDP twice what it is now. And yet now we need austerity. How did things go so horribly wrong?

ETHEL & ERNEST is the latest screen adaptation of a Raymond Briggs graphic novel, following on from the age-old classics like THE SNOWMAN and FATHER Christmas. While this outing can't hold a candle to the best of the Briggs productions, it's well worth a look for fans of the author. The interesting thing about ETHEL & ERNEST is that it's a true story, an autobiographical account of the lives of Briggs's parents in the middle part of the 20th century.The story is kept deliberately small scale and charts everyday life in a realistic way. I liked the way that it's deliberately set in a single house for the most part, but in this house we witness the great events of the 20th century play out, mostly thanks to the newspapers and wireless. The characters of the married couple are kept very realistic and down to earth, and I suppose that's what counts. I didn't care for the casting of Broadbent or Blethyn in the roles: these are two overexposed actors whose voices are so recognisable that they spoil the effect; unknown voice actors would have been much better. The animation of the characters is also very modern, although the backgrounds are excellently detailed.

I've just got around to watching this today. As a 50-year-old I could relate to so much of it and relate it to my grandparents and uncles and aunties who were around during this time. Frankly, I found the film utterly heartbreaking. I must have had tears in my eyes pretty solidly for the last 30 minutes of it. It was quite overwhelming in places especially when Raymond views a body in the morgue which was very reminiscent of something that happened to me recently. I was going to write that it was a perfect slice of life but that is not big enough as it really does pretty much cover two entire lives. My boys who are under ten it has to be said were not gripped by it and did fade in and out of watching it but for adults, I can't recommend it highly enough.

I had, of course, read the reviews of this film before unintentionally falling upon it by chance on Christmas television.I have long lamented the lack of charm in most of the recent Disney films, for example, indeed the absence of charm in today's society in general, but it is present in this film in abundance. Not only is this film visually captivating but I was frequently moved to tears by the unexpected pathos of this story, which is a microcosm of the experiences of that most extra-ordinary generation who fought and survived the Second World War and who's members, through age and slow disease, are now virtually all departed from this world.This film is sincere, amusing and observant, and like the Snowman, however different in style, will endure forever.