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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 360770" data-attributes="member: 23">Grace and Goliath (2018) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.seriebox.com%2Ffilms%2F81%2F81750%2Faffich_81750_1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=5ba3065ad8ee4d89b79033e9d0b38a6833bea1bf8d213475e59899c353ef1795&ipo=images" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> I watched this one on a whim when glancing at the description and seeing that it was set in Belfast. Irish films have often appealed to me for their grit and frank humour. I wouldn't really put this one in that same league. It's mostly bland and predictable and the humour misses for me as often as it hits, being so broad and clunky that it only needs the "Ba-Bum-Tsssshhh" to tell us how funny the powers that be think it is. Likewise, the few twists can be seen coming from miles away. Not that it's unpleasant to watch. I appreciate having a cast of mostly - to me at least -unknowns, and it's such a mosaic of unlikely relationships that it works on curiosity value alone. Even the performances that aren't great are at least endearing (the two fat comic relief neighbours are given little enough screen time that they never wear out their welcome). It's good news/bad news with the child actors. The two boys do a nice job with their arc. The girl is far too nauseatingly cutesy-wutesy for my taste (there's nothing less cute than a kid who is trying to be cute). Unfortunately, much of the final act rides on the viewer being invested in the young girl's adorability, and it gets into some seriously saccharine mawkish territory with the threat that she may die (I may or may not have tutted out loud when they started  singing Amazing Grace at her bedside). What the film lacks is a real edge, which means it's understood that they'd never be bold enough to kill off a kid. All of which takes away any sense of  jeopardy and, ultimately, purpose. There's some good stuff, and I particularly liked the sense of community. But by the end everything just felt a bit too neatly wrapped and cosy. My benchmark for this film was The King's Speech, since I have a DVD of that film which packaged The Madness Of King George as a special bonus. While it felt inferior to The King's Speech, I do remember feeling it felt a little unfair of me to be comparing them and that it would probably do better taken on its own merits since it had some good performances. I just had a look back to see what I wrote about it in this thread after watching it in 2017, but it turns out I'd written nothing. Perhaps that's a statement in itself. But equally, I'd also like to re-watch it in isolation now that I have nothing against which to directly compare it.</blockquote>

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