In Kate Winslet’s directorial debut, “family is everything”, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. On screen, the film is a “gentle comic-drama” in which the grown-up children of a terminally ill English matriarch come together at Christmas to be with her in her final days. Off screen, Winslet’s decision to grab the megaphone was prompted by the fact that the film was written by Joe Anders, her 21-year-old son with Sam Mendes, and was inspired by her own mother’s death.
‘Beloved British actors’
Not every screenwriter gets their first feature backed by Netflix, but “such is the film business”. And Winslet has certainly attracted an impressive cast. The “treasured grandma” of the title is played by Helen Mirren; Timothy Spall is her husband, who is in total denial about her imminent death; and their semi-estranged offspring, who must try to put aside their differences to make her last days easeful, are played by Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Toni Collette and Johnny Flynn. Australia’s Collette apart, it starts to feel like “a game of beloved British actors bingo”, with only Bill Nighy’s absence depriving audiences of a full house.
‘A treacly soup of sentimentality’
There are some “nice lines and sharp moments” in this festive heartwarmer, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. But alas, these are “submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality”. The upshot is a film with the air of “a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad”.
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Anders needs to work on his characterisation, said Donald Clarke in The Irish Times. He has saddled Collette, for instance, with a “one note version of the same irritating hippie” she played in “About a Boy”. Still, these are fine actors, who sometimes get the chance for a good rally; and this is, at least, “a proper Christmas film of the old school”. It may well end up playing “once a year until the heat death of the universe”.
