Critical Reception
The film received mixed reviews. Though Rickman and Grant were unanimously praised, many audiences were left cold by its bleak, subversive tone 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." 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."
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 . . . 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."
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."
Alan Rickman has said that he felt the film suffered comparisons to Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Read more about this topic: An Awfully Big Adventure, Release
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)