Gladiatress (2004)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

British humour - if you don't get British humour your face will be like, 'huh?' all the way through. Test: "Dyslexic man walks into a bra," subtract 4 if you went, 'huh?'.Excellent production values with just a few odd scene shifts, nice score and the jokes are maintained through to the end. Good characterisation and plot that makes you care about this mad alternate Roman world. This is what happens when a good group of actors are pooled together and told, 'It's a pantomime - go for it.' There are some great pastiche characters; the Picts are perfect and I loved the queen, 'Excellent war, well done, carry on.'

The idiotic cover almost stopped me from watching the movie, because it seemed to indicate this could be moronic rubbish like "Meet the Spartans" again, but fortunately it's something completely different. First, they really got their historical background right. The explanation how the Romans could conquer Gallia and Britannia - not simply by brute force, but let proxies fight their wars for them and fight tribes separately which were enemies of each other - is given better than in most serious movies about that period. Asking the question "were some slaves actually satisfied with their primitive life without any rights"? like Worthaboutapig is probably more realistic than the heroic rebels of Spartacus movies, since Spartacus was the exception not the rule when it comes to self-sacrifice, but it's all quite politically incorrect to ask, I bet.This is one of the funniest movies I've watched in the last couple of years. It's dominated by three women who fight against all odds ("I must warn you, I'm a Celtic warrior princess. I can kill a man in 17 different ways. 18, if you include cooking") which is of course unusual in the genre but works extremely well since their characters are so extremely different. Hide the DVD from your girlfriend, though, it may give her ideas...

On the video cover, there's a back view of a girl in a short Roman skirt, and some text which says, "Does my Gluteus Meximus look big in this?"That one costume, and that one joke, is better than anything in the entire movie. I swear, it made me wonder of it's so much to ask that watching a movie be at least as entertaining as looking at the cover.All the women, even in the actual arena, are fully clothed in baggy fur. The sets are obviously cheep, jokes are just bad, it seems to have been made by people who don't know anything about movies. There's one good scene;In this movie the Tpits are depicted as always wearing severed rotting human heads around their necks like necklaces. In one scene the 3 (three) main characters are disguising themselves as 2 (two) Tpits. The first one has an actual head around her neck, but the second one has the third one standing inside her clothes pretending to be a severed head. I recommend instead;The ArenaSparticusMonty Python's Holy grail

OK, I had several advantages in watching Gladiatress...I had read the terrible reviews and had the lowest possible expectations, so I wasn't going to be disappointed.I watched it with a glass of good wine and in the company of two friends who had happy memories of their fun time as extras (and we even managed to catch glimpses of them) - I recognised every single location shot - all within a few miles of my home So, you have to weigh this when I say we all enjoyed it. We all laughed aloud lots of times.It also looks great. Much higher production values than you'd expect for a movie of this type. Partly this is down having borrowed equipment and costumes from the multi zillion dollar Gladiator. But it is also a well-made movie in its own right (OK, it's not Once upon a Time in the West - but neither is it On The Buses).And Sally Phillips is just scrummy. She can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. And, apparently, she is a very nice person too.So... this is never going to be on anyone's Top Ten, but give it a chance. I think some of the negativity it's had is completely over the top. I hope it does get a theatrical release - I think it deserves that.