Review of A Bunch of Amateurs (2008) by Rob L — 22 Dec 2008

Old-fashioned Brit comedy, but a genuinely warm film and very enjoyable. Burt Reynolds is Jefferson Steel, an over-the-hill movie star, who is fooled into accepting what he thinks is King Lear in Stratford - but is actually an amateur production in Stratford St John, a sleepy Suffolk village populated by the usual bunch of eccentrics.

It starts off rather slowly, and it isn't until Steel makes it from America to England that it really starts to get into its stride. Samantha Bond, Imelda Staunton and Derek Jacobi as the villagers are fantastic, Bond especially - sample line 'It may not be a limo, but we can get Radio Ipswich!' Jacobi sends himself up mercilessly as the standard pompous character who thinks he was born to do Shakespeare (and of course he has, many times in real life!).

There's a couple of really funny running jokes too, with Steel being mistaken for other stars ('It's Tom Selleck!) and two of the Lear cast coming up with outlandish ways of removing Gloucester's eye. Could have done without the agent subplot, and to an extent the daughter in rubbish plays one too, although without that the end doesn't work.