Finding Your Feet (2018)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Best movie of this year hands down!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Sometimes when something is predictable I'm happy because I like what's predicted. That was the case with Finding Your Feet. Once I knew what the story line would be, many lines and scenes became predictable but who cared! I thoroughly enjoyed watching the film. The acting was excellent, especially by Imelda Staunton and Celia Imre. The characters they played were imminently likeable. They were different but their mutual love and respect for each other made them accept their differences. The film both looked and sounded great: full of color and rhythm. I alternately smiled and had tears. In the end I loved having a film about people my age, that I could relate to, that was both dramatic and ironic. P.S. After watching this film a second time within 24 hours, I loved and realized just how great it is, so changed the title and rating above.

Sandra's titled husband is having an affair, so she ends up leaving their classy country house and moving in with her sister Bif in her London maisonette. Sandra is a posh snob, while Bif is a bohemian who lives by her own rule book. And gradually the influence of Bif and her friends, especially at her dance class, begins to have an effect on Sandra.This is a fairly straightforward comedy of manners cross-pollinated with some fairly strong character studies, particularly the two sisters. However, when you consider the tip-top cast - Imelda Staunton as Sandra, Celia Imrie as Bif, Timothy Spall as dance class van driver Charlie - the whole thing is raised several notches above where the content might otherwise lead you to expect it.The story is perfectly satisfactory though unexceptional, and provides the opportunity for Staunton, Imrie and Spall to all have special moments which might cause you to wipe your eyes. It is amusing without being laugh-out-loud funny, and I left with a smile on my face, as did the rest of the oldish English audience.

What an absolutely WONDERFUL film, I couldn't recommend it highly enough. Great humour, sadness but a real feel-good film, go and see it, you won't be sorry!! I absolutely loved it, and applauded at the end!

There are some films whose trailers really don't properly represent their contents. The trailer for the new 'grey-pound' film "Finding Your Feet" promised a light hearted and witty foray into an elderly dance-club. And, yes, you get some laughs. But it's very much a bitter sweet comedy, and the bitterness is ladled on by the bucketload leading to more tears than smiles through the majority of the running time.Sandra (Imelda Staunton, "Pride") - now Lady Sandra, after her husband's latest knighthood - is in a predictable, sex-free but reasonably happy marriage to legal beagle Mike (John Sessions, "Denial", "Florence Foster Jenkins") when her world is shaken to its core on discovering that Mike has been having a five-year affair with her best friend Pamela (Josie Lawrence). Moving in with her Bohemian sister Bif (Celia Imrie, "Bridget Jones Baby"), she struggles to integrate into her decidedly lower class lifestyle and find common ground with Bif's dance club friends Charlie (Timothy Spall, "Denial", "Mr Turner"), Ted (David Hayman) and Jackie (Joanna Lumley, "The Wolf of Wall Street").Can Sandra turn her downward spiral around and find love and happiness again? Well, the posters scream "The Feel Good Film of the Year" so you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know the answer to that! But it's a bumpy journey for sure. Getting all the acting honours is Timothy Spall, who is far too good to be buried away in this small British rom com. To watch him do "ordinary bloke doing ordinary things" is an absolute delight. He adds class and distinction to every scene he's in, especially for those concerned with his truly tragic and upsetting back-story. Running a close second is Celia Imrie who has a wicked smile off to perfection and adds a lot of emotional depth to her performance: and she needs the range, since she too is on a pretty emotional journey through the second half of the film.John Sessions and Josie Lawrence - old compatriots of course from the original version of TV's "Whose Line Is It Anyway" - also deliver marvellous cameo performances, as does Phoebe Nicholls ("The Elephant Man", "Downton Abbey") as the tennis playing friend Janet. Less convincing for me was Imelda Staunton, particularly in the first half of the film: for me she never quite pulls off the icy cold emotional wreck of Sandra, but is much better once the thaw has set in.The film is written by Meg Leonard (in a debut script) and Nick Moorcroft (who did the "St Trinians" scripts). And there are some funny lines in there, although it has to be said that there are not enough of them. The majority of the best ones in fact are in the trailer, never bettered by Joanna Lumley's zinger.... "My last marriage ended for religious reasons.... he thought he was God and I didn't"! There's not much more room for comic lines, since the rest of the script is stuffed with the dramatic outcomes from various flavours of old-age malady. Fortunately I was one of the younger members of the generally grey-haired audience, but for those further up the scale it must have been like staring into the void!The film will win no awards for choreography, since the dance scenes are gloriously inept and out of sync. But this all rather adds to the charm of the piece. Directed by Richard Loncraine, director of the equally forgettable Brit-flick "Wimbledon" and the rather more memorable "Brimstone and Treacle", this is as Douglas Adams would have said "Mostly Harmless": a film that most over-50's will find a pleasant way to spend two hours. But go in expecting a drama with comic moments, rather than the hilarious comedy predicted by the trailer, and you will be better prepared.(I should comment that the rating below is my view: my illustrious wife declared it a triumphant chick-flick and gave it 9*!).