HUGH GRANT'S BIG MISADVENTURE

By Jack Mathews

(Newsday, July 21, 1995)

 

** All AWFULLY'( BIG ADVENTURE. (R)

The director (Mike Newell) and star (Hugh Grant) of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" reunite for this sour black comedy about a young woman (Georgina Cates) who joins a Liverpool theater company and finds bve in all the wrong places. With Alan Rickman. 1:53 (profanity, nudity, adult situations). At area theaters.

 

IF MIKE NEWELL'S "An Awfully Big Adventure" had opened before its star, Hugh Grant, was arrested at the intersection of Hollywood and Divine last month people smitten by his "Four Weddings and a Funeral" charms might not have been so shocked. The character he plays in "Big Adventure" is a supercilious, degenerate creep.

In fact, the same may be said of the movie, a sour black comedy about the coming of age of a spirited and vulnerable teenage girl (Georgina Cates) who takes a job as a gofer for a post-World War II Liverpool theater company. Adapted from Beryl Bainbridge's novel, "Big Adventure" taps into the uniquely black mood of the Brits in the years immediately after the war, when the exhilaration of peace was tempered by so many years of shellings, disorientation and destruction.

That mood does not travel well into late 20th-Century America, especially, when the central character is - by our. increasingly enlightened view of what constitutes abuse - a child. Cates' Stella, is a l6 year-old virgin, full of energy, spirit, curiosity and ambition and eager to enter an adult world that she is spectacularly unprepared to handle. It would be hard enough for her to protect herself in an accounting office; joining a repertory company is like doing a swan dive into a shark tank.

The chief predator in this tank is Meredith Potter (Grant), the self-obsessed manager director whose passion for the theater is matched by a passion for seducing and destroying the young people who come in - specifically the young boys, a predilection noticeable to everyone except Stella, who falls instantly in love with him.

Blaming her inexperience for Potters lack of interest in her, Stella seeks a sexual mentor in the middle-aged P. L. O'Hara (Alan Rickman), a vagabond actor playing Captain Hook in the company's rushed production of "Peter Pan." O'Hara, after a moment of noble reluctance, takes the assignment, and attempts to teach her enough about the broader issues of life for her to avoid the trap being set for her by Potter.

If this sounds like tawdry soap opera, it sure is. And I haven't even hinted at the melodramatic twist that Fine Line Features formally asked critics not to reveal. I'll just say that the last-act revelation is not worth the wait - not as a resolution to the story, and certainly not as entertainment. It turns "Big Adventure" into a psychological shaggy dog story.

Casting Grant as the vicious Potter and Rickman as O'Hara, a decent man with a troubled past, is a nice casting switch. No one is better at playing villains than Rickman, and Grant's stammering charms have made him - recent events notwithstanding - Hollywood's new heartthrob. Only Rickman has the range to pull it off, however. While Grant attempts to get by with an assortment of adopted mannerisms, Rickman suggests depths to O'Hara that go far beyond what was written into the part.

But it's a limited role for Rickman, who doesn't show up until midway through the movie, and we have to rely on the newcomer Cates to get us there. Cates, playing a character very reminiscent of the "Georgy Girl" role that made young and plump Lynn Redgrave a star, is by far the best thing about "An Awfillly Big Adventure." It's no small trick to be insightful and innocent at the same time, and though the accomplishment is blunted by the overall wretchedness of the movie, we can assume there will better days ahead for her.

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page