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An Awfully Big Adventure is a 1995 British coming-of-age film directed by Mike Newell. The story concerns a girl who joins a local repertory theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue.

The title is an ironic nod to the original Peter Pan story, in which Peter says, "To die will be an awfully big adventure." Set in 1947, the film was adapted from the Booker Prize-nominated 1989 novel of the same name by Beryl Bainbridge.

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In the film's prologue, a hotelier ushers someone into a bomb shelter during the Liverpool Blitz. We see a brief flashback to a woman leaving her baby in a basement surrounded by flickering candles. Before departing from the house, she quickly drops a string of pearls on her child's pillow, twined around a single rose.

Some time later, Stella Bradshaw lives in a working class household with her Uncle Vernon and Aunt Lily in Liverpool. Lacking a person in her life to whom she feels close, she frequently goes into phone booths to "speak with her mother", who never appears in the film. Her uncle, who sees a theatrical career as being her only alternative to working behind the counter at Woolworth's, signs her up for speech lessons and pulls strings to get her involved at a local repertory theatre. After an unsuccessful audition, Stella gets a job gofering for Meredith Potter, the troupe's sleazy, eccentric director, and Bunny, his faithful stage manager.

Georgina Cates, whose real name is Clare Woodgate, was initially declined when she first auditioned for the film. Upon rejection, she dyed her hair red, changed her name and reinvented herself as a teenage girl from Liverpool with no acting experience and applied again. The second time she got the role. Alan Rickman was reportedly miffed when he found out her true age. According to Mike Newell, he "treated her very tactfully, presuming that she was sexually inexperienced and could get upset by the scene."[3]

A soundtrack album was released on 20 June 1995 by Silva Screen Records. In addition to the original film score composed by Richard Hartley, the Irish folk song "The Last Rose of Summer" is used as O'Hara's theme music throughout the film.

The film did not perform well at the box office, grossing only $593,350 in the United Kingdom and $258,195 in the United States.[5] It grossed $2 million worldwide.[2] However, Georgina Cates received a London Film Critics Circle Award nomination for Best Actress of the Year and Mike Newell was nominated for a Crystal Globe Award for Best Director at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Although Rickman and Grant were unanimously praised, many were indifferent to the film's bleak, subtle humor and episodic structure. Lisa Schwartzenbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "Rickman... is the most interesting thing going in this unwieldy muddle... There's a creepy allure to O'Hara, and it is his energy that moves the story along to its unsettling surprise ending."[7] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "This isn't a sentimental slice of British eccentricity, or a gentle glance at amateur theatricals and the oddballs who inhabit them... Instead, it's a sour, unpleasant experience that gives us every reason not to become involved. Newell, who directed Four Weddings with such a light touch and such fondness, leaves the impression here that he doesn't like his characters and doesn't mind if we don't, either."[8]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times, however, felt that it captured "Mr. Grant as the clever, versatile character actor he was then becoming, rather than the international dreamboat he is today... [the film] isn't overly concerned with making its stars look good. Mr. Grant wears a monocle, has nicotine-stained fingers and appears in one scene looking dissolute and vomit-stained... As it turns out, a public relations blackout is only the least of this admirable film's problems. Its Liverpool accents are thickly impenetrable. And Ms. Bainbridge's book is elliptical to begin with, which guarantees that some of its fine points will be lost in translation. Mr. Newell directs his actors beautifully, but the screenplay by Charles Wood echoes Ms. Bainbridge in letting important information fly by obliquely. So listen closely. This is a dark, eccentric film that both requires and rewards keen attention."[9]

Similarly, Joel Pearce of DVD Verdict commented that "An Awfully Big Adventure is disappointing, but not because it's a bad movie... In fact, it's a good movie that's been the victim of extremely bad marketing... Hugh Grant is at his sleazy, sardonic best... Some elements of the film are too subtle, so it takes a while to figure out what's really going on."[10]

Intothis morass wanders a stage-struck local girl named Stella (Georgina Cates),who will take a job, any job, just to be near what she sees as theatricalglamor - and, in her town, she's right. She gets hired as the assistant stagemanager, and soon begins discovering and guessing the various secrets of thecompany - although some very big ones are saved for the end of the film. And shebecomes the object of passes from some of the men in the company, although shehas a rather chilling effect on one when she replies to his advance, "Idon't like the feeling of it, thank you very much." Stella is not the mostattractive of young women, and some critics have faulted the film becausemembers of the company are drawn to her. They miss the point, which is that intheir desperate situation, emotional beggars can't afford to be choosers, andStella's relative innocence and naivetmake her glow in contrast to the weariness all around.

Themovie was directed by Mike Newell ("Enchanted April," "FourWeddings And A Funeral"), who grapples with the problem that no one in themovie is especially nice. Hugh Grant, who made this film before "FourWeddings," has recently had to face the criticism that he works too hardat being ingratiating and likable. Not in this film; along with "TheEnglishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain," it shows that he hasrange as an actor. But his character desperately cries out for others who willbe counterpoint, instead of harmony, to the general gloom.

Just catching up with more of your postings, MG.:) I saw this movie a long time ago and also read Beryl Bainbridge's novel - I remember admiring both. As a lifelong fan of Hugh Grant, it is nice to see a film where he does a role out of his usual sphere - he actually did quite a few more adventurous roles earlier in his career, before he got typecast in romantic comedies (though I like him in those too.

I was honestly not sure where to start with this review as I have very mixed feelings about this adaptation. So I will start with an overview of the story as told in the film, noting particularly where it deviates from the book.

Like in the 90s Adventure Series the film opens with a dramatic scene unrelated to the children. This time a man in an orange boiler suit gets shot, then an obvious dummy in an orange boiler suit plunges to its death from the top of a cliff. A Royal navy helicopter collects the body from the sea. A different man (a dry one) holds up a one hundred dollar bill for our inspection. Two more helicopters fly over a rocky coastline. A hand burns a hundred dollar bill.

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Central view here is a caustic one of adults who are nearly all portrayed as selfish users carelessly taking advantage of kids they can manipulate emotionally. This pointed truth, however, might have been even more effectively and poignantly expressed had the film more enthusiastically portrayed the intoxicating allure that a life in the theater can have for young people. The thrill and excitement are virtually nowhere present, just the degrading and dispiriting.

I wonder if the problem is the age at which children tend to really watch films. Any parent who takes a wriggling 5 year old to a cinema needs their head examined (although I do see a few forced to in order to take the older children, and then they just have to pacify with sweets and whispered threats all through the film). Paddington and Postman Pat are gentle pre-school stories that simply don't offer enough excitement for a 7-9 year old who is the sort of age to want to go and see a 'family' film - hence the manufactured villain. I agree, Cathy, it's a lazy solution - but I think it's because they are trying to capture an audience who is faintly nostalgic about their former TV loves (plus parents very nostalgic about their children's innocent pre-school selves), but who are too old to want to really see them in the original style.

Perhaps it's also something to do with current fashion, or a sign of the times. Maybe the pendulum will swing back at some point and a new 'charming', gentle film will become a blockbuster, to everyone's surprise. I like to think so.

Simple holiday adventures might involve a threat to a poor community or might involve someone being isolated from their family and needing to get home. The heroes might, for example, enter a village in need of heroes. Or they might rescue a soldier who is trying desperately to get home to his family. Or the local shrine has been taken over by a hostile force and that prevents the community from making an annual pilgrimage or ritual observance.

The only saving grace for this film is the voice acting. With an array of top tier voice actors in the cast, each under the expert direction of the renowned Andrea Romano. Yes, there are better Looney Tunes titles out there that feature these talents in the same roles, but when the material is THIS uninspired, such qualities stand out as remarkable achievements. ff782bc1db