Rating: 
Summary: "I Saw Something Nasty In The Woodshed!" The Starkadder Fam!
Review: Originally broadcast in 1971, the telly production of Stella Gibbon's 1932 novel, "Cold Comfort Farm" helped to launch the first season of PBS's signature series, "Masterpiece Theatre".
This is a great remake and is director, John Schlessinger's acclaimed 1995 film adaptation starring a TERRIFIC Kate Beckinsale as the recently orphaned, Flora Poste.
Set in the 1930's, in England, Flora writes to all of her relation, hoping someone will take her in as she has no real drive or ambition, save for possibly becoming the next Jane Austen. Flora accepts an offer from The Starkadders Of Cold Comfort Farm in Howling, Sussex. She thinks that she just might like farm life and it might be good for her writing career. However, once she arrives she finds out that the farm has had a curse upon it along with all of the inhabitants, human and animal alike.
The Starkadder family is comprised of Amos & his forelorn wife, Judith, & their two virile & rakish sons, Seth and Reuben. As Flora says, "Highly sexed young men living on farms are always called Seth or Reuben."
Also living at Cold Comfort is a lovely waifish sprite of a cousin, Elfine, the hired help, Adam Lambsbreath, Urk, Rennet & Mrs. Beetle. Also locked in her chambers is an old crusty hermit of a grandmamma, Ada Doom (appropriately named). The Starkadders & the rest of the clan are pure country folk with pure country ways. Their lives being quite primitive in contrast with Flora's.
Flora sets out to change it all though and with some priceless and hilarious scenes ensuing. Flora tries to bring everyone around to a higher common sense and does it with great gusto.
With lines in the film like:
Amos Starkadder: Seth, drain the well. There's a neighbor missing.
Violet: She b'aint worf it Urk, she jus b'aint worf it!
and the two most repeated and beloved lines in the film:
Ada Doom: I saw something nasty in the woodshed! & "There has always been Starkadders on Cold Comfort Farm."
This film is a gem, a fabulous adaptation of the novel and a great and wonderful surprise for it's viewers. A great cast and performances with the great Ian McKellen,Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Eileen Atkins and Rufus Sewell. I highly recommend "Cold Comfort Farm"!
Happy Watching!
Rating:
Summary: Both amusing and diverting.
Review: This is one of my very favorite little films. Friends come over and want to borrow a DVD and ask - "what's good?" I tell them "Cold Comfort Farm." They invariably return it with high praise and hearty thanks for having turned them on to it. This is a wonderful spoof of Jane Austin, full of indelible characters and performances. Joanna Lumley is divine as Mrs. Smiley. Eileen Atkins (every bit as good here as she was in "Gosford Park"), Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry are wonderfully broad and eccentric. John Schlesinger directed a number of fine films including "Billy Liar," "Darling," "Far From the Madding Crowd" (another favorite of mine), "Midnight Cowboy" (for which he won an Oscar), "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Day of the Locust" and the underrated "Madame Sousatzka." "Cold Comfort Farm" was his final 'great' film and deserves to be acknowledged as such. Don't miss this almost forgotten gem.
Rating: 
Summary: The questions are not important, the answers are wonderful
Review: I was first attracted to this movie due to the presence of Kate (VAN HELSING, UNDERWORLD) Beckinsale who plays chic London socialite Flora Poste in this wonderful, funny and heart warming adaptation of the 1932 Stella Gibbons novel.
Flora, with dreams of becoming a novelist, moves to the rural countryside to live with her great Aunt and her family on Cold Comfort Farm, a down-on-its-luck farmstead deep in the English countryside. There she encounters a number of wonderful eccentric characters who seem to be living in the past - one of them uses a twig to clean the dishes. Flora sets about lifting the doom and gloom that surrounds the farm and bringing 'enlightenment' to the inhabitants by helping to make their suppressed dreams come true.
What makes this movie so much fun is the characters that Flora encounters, and as with such character-driven movies, the choice of actors is so important. Thankfully some strong caliber acting talent was brought in and they equip themselves wonderfully. From Ian McKellen of the LORD OF THE RING'S trilogy to Rufus (A KNIGHT'S TALE) Sewell the results are exemplary.
Raised for the first ten years of my life on my grandfathers farm on the English-Scottish border, I found the movie a particular delight. Though clearly over-the-top some of the observations of country living (from Gibbons) awakened a strange sense of nostalgia and wondering how life had been for my grandfather back in the 1930s and 1940s.
This is a gem of a movie and I encourage everyone to give this movie a chance.
Rating:
Summary: Can't endure a mess
Review: "Cold Comfort Farm," Stella Gibbons' hilarious literary satire, is brought to life in this polished TV adaptation. Faithful to its source but never stuffy, the adaptation is full of solid performances and entertaining subplots and romance, even if it is a bit slow at times.
Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale) is suddenly orphaned with only 100 pounds a year -- a piddling amount of money in high-society London. She aspires to be the next Jane Austen, and has no skills besides writing. (And given the number of times we hear "golden orb," writing isn't too good either) So she agrees to go live at Cold Comfort Farm. The farm is well-named -- it's dirty, primitive, and broke.
The backwater inhabitants include sex-and-movies-obsessed Seth (Rufus Sewell), hellfire preacher Amos (Ian McKellen), his depressed wife Judith (Eileen Atkins), and the unhinged old Aunt Ada Doom (Sheila Burrell), who "saw something nasty in the woodshed." Not to mention Elfine (Maria Miles), a farm girl in love with a young blueblood. With practicality to spare, Flora sets up love matches, fixes up the family feuds, and tidies up the homestead.
Take some nineteenth century novel's most primitive farms, and plop a practical, thoroughly independent young woman in the middle of it. Add a few dark mysteries -- what are Flora's "rights?" What did Aunt Ada see? -- and you have "Cold Comfort Farm." Stella Gibbons had a subtle, wry sense of humor, and the movie adaptation keeps the spirit alive.
It's lots of fun to see Flora cleaning up house, both literally and figuratively. She keeps trying to arrange everyone's lives so, in the long run, they'll be happy -- while postponing what might make herself happy. The plot moves at a rather slow clip, sprinkled with fun scenes like Elfine's makeover, or Amos's frenetic sermon (complete with graphic descriptions of hell's torments). Not to mention the dozens of funny lines, like Amos's deadpan, "Seth, you drain the well -- there's a neighbor missing."
Kate Beckinsale does a wonderful job as the no-nonsence Flora Poste. She's backed up by good performances: Stephen Fry's obnoxiously overenthusiastic Mr. Mybug, an unwanted suitor of Flora's, and Joanna Lumley as Flora's best pal and bra collector. Ian McKellen is particularly good as a wild-haired hellfire preacher. And Eileen Atkins drifts around in a morbid, pop-eyed stupor as Judith Starkadder.
"Cold Comfort Farm" is jolly good fun, a warm-hearted satire with plenty of excellent acting. Good fun for anyone who likes to poke fun at costume dramas and gothic family secrets.
Rating:
Summary: Farm house with a view....
Review: Kate Beckensale might be best remembered for her role in PEARL HARBOR, but I first became aware of her in EMMA. I am very happy to see that CCF has finally been 'uncoupled' from the porm film one used to find for sale with it. I have been replacing my lazer disks one by one as films become available on DVD and had waited for a long while for this DVD. The film is a gem. Joanna Lumley makes a rather brief appearance although she is pictured on the DVD cover. I suppose Universal Studios thought we Americans might recognize Lumley before Eileen Atkins, who also plays in this film although she was recently seen in COLD MOUNTAIN as the 'old goat woman' or Ian McKellen who played Gandalf in the Ring triogy, or Stephen Fry who played Jeeves in the JEEVES AND WOSTER series. CCF is funny and sentimental in a British sort of manner. Who else but the British could envision the salvation of one of their own farm oafs as an offer from Hollywood to play in what undoubtedly will be romantic film productions. (Hey, we aren't all boobs who shoot from the lip!!). And, Joanna Lumley is superb as a slightly weird single girl who spends her down time fondling mannequins. In spite of the tongue and cheek sexual innuendo, I think this film is suitable for family watching. The sly sexy humor is probably over the heads of most American kids. But what do I know, I don't watch American tv, I watch BBC America.
Rating:
Summary: "While I'm here, might I make a few changes?"
Review: Cold Comfort Farm is a jolly film that bounces along as merrily as its theme tune. It's a rollicking good comedy with a laugh-out-loud collection of Dickensian characters (the doom-stricken Starkadders, the rustic Adam Lambsbreath, and the upper crust Hawk-Monitors). Certainly the film is very over-the-top and silly, but it's light-hearted fun - a welcome alternative to the glut of psychological, heart-wrenching, blood-and-guts fare on the market. 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.
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