Cold Comfort Farm

You should be warned that you may have a hard time understanding what some of the inhabitants of Cold Comfort Farm are saying. However, that's intentional and straight from the novel, where the accents and strange word usages often leave Flora puzzled. Here's an exchange (from the novel) that I believe is reproduced pretty much verbatim in the movie, when Reuben comes in after working out in the fields not long after Flora has started living at Cold Comfort Farm:

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...After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence:

'I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute.'

It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. Was it a complaint? If so, one might say, 'My dear, how too sickening for you!' But then, it might be a boast, in which case the correct reply would be, 'Attaboy!' or more simply, 'Come, that's capital.' Weakly she fell back on the comparativel safe remark:

'Did you?' in a bright interested voice.
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Speaking of which, the original novel (written in 1932 by Stella Gibbons) is just as wonderful, and the film is a remarkably faithful adaptation, if (understandably) a bit trimmed and modified. I read the book for the first time after watching the DVD release of the movie and was delighted to see that most of the dialog comes straight from the book, including my favorite line (the interchange between Neck, the movie producer, and Aunt Ada), if a bit punched up.

Finally, for the reviewers who are frustrated that we never find out what Ada saw in the woodshed, what wrongs were done to Robert Poste by Amos Starkadder, and what Flora Poste's rights were...well, the novel leaves us pretty much in the dark as well. In the book, Aunt Ada _does_ answer the second question for Flora--though we as readers don't get to hear the answer--and Ada is interrupted before she can answer Flora's intriguing follow up question, "And did the goat die?"

The movie and the book are both delightful; enjoy. ..bruce..

The Starkadders live on the bleak acres of Cold Comfort Farm, where "the cows are barren and the sows are farren". Into this gloomy and eccentric setting comes young, 1930s-modern Flora Poste, who sets to winning the hearts and minds of Cold Comfort's inhabitants, and dragging the Starkadders into the twentieth century. Along the way she manages to rearrange and enliven her own life too.

Kate Beckinsale (prior to her arrival on the scene of big-budget American flicks) is a likeable and chirpy young lady with a talent for organisation. In the supporting roles, Joanna Lumley is delightfully sarcastic as Flora's incongruously named aunt, Mary Smiling, who has a rather unusual hobby. And Ian McKellen is a real scene-stealer as the fire-and-brimstone preacher of the Church of the Quivering Brethren.

The plot revolves around Great Aunt Ada Doom and the 'narsty' thing she saw in the woodshed nigh on 70 years ago. There is also the mysterious wrong perpetrated on Flora's father by the Starkadders sometime in the dim and misty past. So it is a tad frustrating that the audience is never let in on either of these secrets! But these are minor quibbles in what is otherwise an excellent comedic romp, with some interesting and atmospheric cinematography. A very good (and very British) laugh.