The Land Girls (1998)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Sadly Over-hyped

Load of rubbish!!

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Whenver I think of women on the home-front during WWII, I picture them in factories taking the place of the men who went to fight. I never really thought that someone had to keep the farms going to feed the people.Over 30,000 women left the cities in England to form the Land Army and milk the cows and plow the fields while the boys were gone off to fight the Germans.Having said that, this was basically a Lifetime movie with a couple of laughs. The funniest part was when Ag (Rachel Weisz) decided to lose her virginity.It was good for a story about the effects of the war on peoples lives, especially their love lives, but there just wasn't a lot there.Besides Weisz, there was Catherine McCormack (28 Weeks Later) and Anna Friel, who had a bigger WWII role in The War Bride. Of course, we also have to mention Lucy Akhurst, who was a zombie in Shaun of the Dead.Recommended for Lifetime fans.

Another very good example of an understated British flick being elevated by a strong cast into something worth notice. In a refreshing take on the WWII drama, the focus is on the ones who stayed behind in the war-torn south of England, like the farmers to feed the impoverished nation; the women to keep the factories running and, as in "The Land Girls", to work the land in place of the absent men.Stephen Mackintosh, my favourite underrated Brit actor, gives the film's best performance as Joe, the farmer's son who wishes he was anywhere but home, but he's well supported by Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz and Anna Friel as the unfeasibly but mercifully smouldering girls of the Women's Land Army. Tom Georgeson brings gruff character as Mr Lawrence, the farmer, and check out an early Paul Bettany appearance.Thousands of women found a new freedom in work during the War, but they were expected to return to their domestic, invisible lives once the men returned. "The Land Girls" is not cinema verité; and doesn't pretend to tackle the grimness my mother talks of in England in the 40s and 50s. But who cares? – when I want grim I'll watch a documentary; I'll settle back happily any day to watch fine actors in a quiet, 'little' film with gorgeous Dorset scenery (it really is that beautiful, visit if you can) and a tender story.It will be too slow, too uneventful, for some. Perhaps they'd have preferred a blowsy Hollywood version, where Antonio Banderas plays the farmer's son and Renee Zellwegger the upper crust beauty (hooray for the ghost of a UK film industry). But I found it gentle and charming just as it was; and when the ingredients are so fine to begin with, that's good enough for me. If you like this sort of thing I recommend Powell & Pressburger's magical "Canterbury Tale".

I must compare LAND GIRLS (1998)with the newly-released (2001) ENIGMA both of which I saw this evening. The more recent film is utterly cliche-ridden (Tom Stoppard, the screenwriter, even throws in a bit borrowed from John Buchan's 39 STEPS!) while David Leland's movie continues to surprise the viewer to the last frame. The horror,the restraint, the mood of Britain at war come through careful period reconstruction. Reality is heightened so that the dazzlingly photographed British countryside continually reminds us of the dark shadow of War which hangs over these young lives. The acting is uniformly good and many of the cast come from the British stage to deliver real truth-of-performance. Unlike ENIGMA'S characters you believe the Land Girls and the people around them.

I should like this movie, because, believe it or not, I sing in it. However it could have a more inter-mingly storyline. It is however beautifully shot and you leave with a nice buzz inside you.