just watch it!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I always thought that Roald Dahl's stories were creepy, but this story is the most horrific of all: suggesting that animals are things that can be exchanged without consequences is just disgusting. This is not charming, this is exactly what is wrong with the human race and why animals have to suffer from them. A "hero" who does this, does not deserve to succeed and therefore this story does not work for me at all.

A cutesy BBC TV movie of Roald's Dahl's children book, starring two titanic thespians, Mr. Hoffman and Dame Ms. Dench, it is a life-affirming romance of old age, brandishes the never-too-late-to- fall-in-love trope but outranks it with a more high-minded love-her-even-she-doesn't-love-me magnanimity, but in the end, it relents from its love-lorn tenor with a mutually love-at-first-sight happenstance.Mr. Henry Hopper (Hoffman), moons over his neighbor one story below Mrs. Lavinia Silver (Dench), who has a pet tortoise named Alfie, but worries about its stalled growth. To win her heart, a habitually halting Mr. Hopper fabricates an incantation which he named "Esio Trot" (of Bedouin extraction) and declares that through the magic (thrice a day before meals, specifically, Ms. Silver's meals), Alfie will grow twice as big within one month, which Lavinia accepts with alacrity, she certainly is not the brightest gal in the building (but the heart wants what the heart wants). So Mr. Hopper expends his savings and time in purchasing legions of tortoises with various sizes, so that he can secretively exchange them according to their weight with their predecessor, to conjure up the weight-growing process which predictably will lead to a backfire when bills finally being spilled through a third-wheel played by Cordery with utter chutzpah. There is hearty charm and warmth in the tall-tale, and some actions too (a septuagenarian Hoffman hanging on a make-shift ladder outside his apartment), chiefly, this adaptation pivots on a good-natured show-down between Hoffman's introvert ineptness and Dench's effusive sprightliness, to paper over the story's implausibility and its rather slipshod production design (too garish in its fairy-tale-like artificiality), and James Corden, to significantly lower the average age of the cast, assumes the job as an eloquent fourth-wall-breaking raconteur, as well as a slightly mindless father.Steeped in Louis Armstrong's repertoire, ESIO TROT (literally "tortoise", spelt backwards, which is the linchpin of the incantation, though its logic linked to this tardy breed is a head-scratcher), is coyly nostalgic in its mawkishness being a twilight love story based on a whopper cannot even get a free pass in one's dotage, but it is so rare a movie dedicated itself to that neglected sphere of elder people's love life, garnished by two winsome performances from its eminent dab-hands, it is a delicate amuse-gueule, as often as not, can muzzle those lenient-hearted from bad-mouthing its saccharine overtone.referential point: Dustin Hoffman's QUARTET (2012), 6.0/10

I loved this movie right from the get go. It's a fun, funny, sweet story about life and love and all those interesting bumps in between. You can relate to the characters on some level because I am sure everyone knows someone like either of the leads. It's subtle humor works well with the plot and it just makes you feel that life is worth the living. Very good life lessons as well; we are never too old to learn and grow.I have watched this movie 3 times now and it never fails to satisfy.I most definitely recommend this movie for the whole family. Two well known and well loved actors play the lead roles and they are flawless in their performances.. An all around pleasure to watch.

One of the most disappointing experiences of the festive season. The writers have forgotten what it's like to read a Roald Dahl story to children - the comfortable, innocent experience that is an oasis of childhood.This movie, a pimped-up atrocity with formulaic love triangle had nothing to do with the cleverness, innocence, and brilliantly-judged length of Roald Dahl's original story. He knew there is only so much you can do with a great idea - push it too far and it becomes ordinary (at best).Quips that the writers obviously thought were clever, including both literal and backwards 'choice language', just took the experience further and further away from Dahl's genius for innocence. Additions such as a love rival, alienating narration scenes trying to lean on a father's relationship with their daughter to somehow infuse the film with warmth; even a neighbour's child asking "Are you going to offer me sweets and kidnap me?"... All have a hand in bursting the perfect bubble that Dahl originally created.Edit - sorry, forgot to mention that the three stars are for Dustin Hoffman. A class act, even in this.