This Beautiful Fantastic (2016)

Touches You

The Worst Film Ever

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. We both enjoyed it greatly. The story is entertaining and has happy endings.Set and filmed in the UK, Jessica Brown Findlay (of "Downton Abbey" fame) is a single aspiring author, Bella Brown, working in the local public library. At the beginning we see a glimpse of her backstory, she was abandoned in a box outside, was raised in a Catholic orphanage. She grew up to be bright but also OCD. She has an issue one night outside and falls, hurting herself, and she meets Andrew Scott as Vernon, he works for the old man next door as his housekeeper and cook but this morning brings over his identical twin redhead daughters of about 8 and they cook breakfast for Bella. Then one day on her job at the library she meets Jeremy Irvine as Billy, a young inventor who does research in the library. And finally she meets her next door neighbor, Tom Wilkinson as Alfie Stephenson, seemingly very unfriendly. The visit that kicks everything in high gear is the man who Bella leases from, a neighbor has complained that her backyard "garden" has been completely neglected and she has 30 days to fix it or be evicted. All of this makes for entertaining and often funny situations, all the actors are good in their roles. SPOILERS: With the help of her friends, and the close "supervision" of Alfie, who turns out to be a horticulturist, Bella gets the garden in shape. She gets the boy in the end and, when Alfie dies, finds that he had owned her house and gave it to her in her will. Plus she published her children's book.

Tom Wilkinson is an actor who never fails to please, even in an average, low-budget film like "The Beautiful Fantastic." In this slow-moving fable, the film follows the life of a foundling child, Miss Bella Brown, who grows up to be obsessed with order. She is especially skillful as a mousy librarian who seemingly knows every book in the local library. But her definition of order does not include the outdoors and the paradigm of what is considered order in nature: a garden.The story unfolds around the flimsy premise that Miss Brown will be evicted from her home unless she can transform her unkempt backyard into a beautiful garden. The "magic garden" scenario is played out alongside a children's story that Bella is writing about a fantastic creature. The unconvincing romantic subplot evolves between a library patron who is an inventor and Miss Brown. Sadly, there is not a scintilla of chemistry between the characters.The various narrative strands never come together in the film. But the most engaging scenes are those with Bella in conversation with her neighbor, a curmudgeon and lover of flora named Alfred "Alfie" Stevenson. As Alfie, Wilkinson shines with the one-liners and the character choices of a nasty old man with a heart of gold.One especially glaring weakness with the film was the big build-up to the moment when Bella, working with the assistance of Alfie, finally completes her garden. Inexplicably, we never even see the entire garden, only glimpse a portion of the pond during the celebration. The filmmakers dropped the ball in not creating for the viewer a spectacular floral enclave that was the fruit of the labors of Bella, Alfie, and the long-suffering Irishman, Vernon, a widower who is clearly in love with Bella. With the exception of Alfie, the characters in this film were one-dimensional, cardboard cutouts. And the viewers were left in the lurch, as we were frantically screaming, "Show us the garden!"As a expert gardener, Alfie delivers a memorable metaphor of the ideal garden as "a world of beautifully ordered chaos." Unfortunately, the film had plenty of chaos, but lacked the beauty and the order of a garden that was never revealed to the audience.

"This Beautiful Fantastic" (honestly a pretty bad title sadly) is a British/American co-production that premiered last year (2016) and is the most recent work by writer and director Simon Aboud. For him, it is the second full feature film and this one here has all the possibilities to become more famous than his first work starring Timothy Spall btw. He also worked on several short films, for example a Paul McCartney music video. Anyway, back to this one here. The lead actress is Jessica Brown Findlay and it is a bit of a breakthrough performance. First of all, she is amazingly gorgeous in my opinion, a mix of Scarlett Johansson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead with an ounce of Gemma Arterton. People who still say today that British girls are not attractive really need to take a look at her. I see she was also in Downton Abbey, but I never really liked that show, so no further comment there. As for this film here, I think she also shows she is a good actress, even if the role eventually does not have as much to offer as it initially seems. But she does a good job with the OCD parts for example. The rest of the cast also includes some well-known names. Jeremy Irvine has been in some known films already and Andrew Scott is known to many too, mostly for appearing in the (horribly overrated) Sherlock series. But he is good there and I also liked him in this 100-minute movie here. Actually, I wanted him to get the girl eventually, but oh well I guess it's fine what they did as friendship is a nice option too. I just found him more likable somehow than the actual love interest.And then there is also 2-time Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson, who was probably the very best thing about the film, which also shows that he is part of the most emotional moment at the very end and I found it pretty sad, even if it was not entirely unexpected with his earlier comment during a phone conversation. I read people compare this film to Amélie on some occasions, but I am not sure I would agree. Yes there is a moment here and there where the tone and atmosphere was similar, but as a whole I see almost no parallels apart from the central female character. I would also say it is slightly worse, but has its own strengths nonetheless and the film shines for entirely different reasons than Amélie. Oh yeah and ducks are amazing, no doubt about it. All in all, I believe this was a pretty good watch, sometimes even great thanks to Wilkinson, that I would not count anywhere near my very best of the year, but a fairly convincing film from start to finish that had me curious about what would happen next to the characters. Maybe my preference for Scott's character also had to do with me liking the actor as the eventual love interest is also a likable character without a doubt, especially with the final revelation that was as simple as making sense. It was good because if he really had cheated on her and the explanation of her seeing him with another chick would have been slightly weird with how she reacted, even if this also had to do with her illness. Anyway, it's still good the film did not focus on the illness entirely, but just as part of the side action. Finally, I want to finish my review with a little reference to a scene that showed everybody how much the relationship was helping her. This would be a scene with the door that she obsessively closes early on, but when she is off to see her sweetheart, then she just lets it open and forgets about the disorder completely. That's all from me now. Go see this film if you get a chance too. You will not be disappointed.

Clichéd and unrealistic characters with a plot(?)that limps along dragged even further back by dialogue that an 8 year old could improve upon. Like standing in front of an empty fridge desperately wishing for it to fill. You'd gain more from watching your own toenails grow. May enjoy this if you're on serious drugs or terminally stupid. Writer needs shooting before he can damage cinema goers even more.