Rating: 
Summary: Cornwall is not in Scotland or Northern England..?
Review: Saving Grace is surely one of the leading contenders for the 'How to Ruin an Adequate Film in the Final Few Minutes' award. Naturally if you mix a quaint Cornish village - largely populated by retired genteel ladies - with a liberal dose of marijuana, a certain amount of silliness will ensue. However, the last seven minutes of the film descend into the totally ludicrous and is not even redeemed by being particularly funny. It is a real shame, because this comedy has the potential to be every bit as good as 1998's Waking Ned Devine, which also portrayed a picturesque small village and its oddball inhabitants trying to extract themselves from a tricky situation.The protagonist of Saving Grace is middle-aged, recently widowed Grace Trevethyn, whose husband's legacy of bad debts has forced her into an unconventional way of earning money. Helped by her gardener, Matthew, she turns her horticultural expertise to the lucrative cultivation of marijuana. Unfortunately, this leads her into confrontation with the local police, her husband's creditors and a French drug baron. . . . . . . . . . whom all turn up at her greenhouse simultaneously. The relationship and rapport between Grace and Matthew is well-portrayed, and Brenda Blethyn gets the viewer emotionally involved with her likeable character - you can really feel what she is going through. The casting of the minor roles is excellent, even if some of them are rather outlandishly eccentric. However, the transformation of Jacques the drug lord into Grace's romantic interest is highly implausible and does not fit the tone of the movie at all. And surely hydroponics is not such a revolution in the world of cannabis growing? Sadly the film swaps gentle humour for slapstick and ends up being as fake as the marijuana plants.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Funny
Review: What is a widow to do when her husband dies leaving her in debt and losing everything? This is the question at the beginning of the movie when we meet Grace, who is steadily having things reposessed from her manor house and having to lay off her workers. She, a prize winning orchid grower, has nothing to fall back on and nowhere to turn. Her gardener, a nice young man in a shaky relationship, turns to her for her expertise in helping a small plant he has been trying to grow under cover behind the parish. Grace may seem naive but she snaps immediately on the fact that this is a marijuana plant. But it is a plant and her heart goes out for it. As she nurses it back to health in her greenhouse she begins to realize its value to her and the gardener realizes her ability with the plants and a plan is hatched. This is a truly funny movie with realistic seeming characters "thinking outside of the box". The whole township is endearing as they try to support Grace through her difficult times and some hilarious things ensue.
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