Film Reviews by None

If you've read the books, you probably won't recognise this as Agatha Raisin. She's young, slim and blonde, as opposed to old, chunky and dark. This seems a very loose adaptation, with everyone being made younger and sexier. The storyline such as it is, involves a murder, by poisoned quiche at the local village fête.

The books have really suffered as the series drags on, and this seems to take the worst of the later books and run with it, instead of taking the early well written ones as it's basis.

If you haven't read the books this will probably please you if you're a fan of cozy murder mystery, tho it's hard to imagine all these young sexy clichéd characters settling in a sleepy Cotswolds village in the first place.

Guy meets junkie, junkie disappears, guy breaks up with junkie, rinse & repeat until movie ends.

Usually it's the awful acting & writing that let's these 'gay' films down, this however was decently acted, and even decently written, it was just dull, depressing and nothing happened.

This didn't feel like a movie. . . it was more like a Sunday afternoon drama, with a subpar Hugh Grant clone in the main role. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good, and very slow, and the laughs were thin on the ground for being billed as a comedy, more likely to raise a wry smile a few times than give you any belly laughs.

Very weak comedy, I can honestly say I never laughed once, it's mildly amusing but just not laugh out loud funny. The best thing about this was the Aussie lead actor's English accent.

I suppose it's good these films get made, but the flimsy plot wasn't enough to sustain a whole film let alone a half hour sitcom. Every character was a tired cliche, the aging queen, the slutty gogo boy, the angsty looking for love guy and of course the new boy in the big city. If it came on tv I'd probably have switched it over.

This was of course slated because Madonna directed it, any other first time director (she did direct an arty film previously but for some reason it was called a 'short') would have been given the benefit of the doubt. That being said it didn't quite work, the modern story was confusing, yet predictable & unnecessary. The look of the film & period detail were all excellent, she really does have an eye for detail. A period biopic would really have been a better idea, but it's by no means the awful trash that reviewers would have you believe . . .give it a go and decide for yourself.

Whilst fiddling with settings I noticed there was an option to watch this in English. . .please don't. . .the nasty American accents are so grating I had to stop the movie and start it again in the original language.

This is the middle film in the trilogy and some people feel it's filler but compared to the book they've had to condense it a lot so perhaps some of the good points were lost. I didn't really find that however.

I'm more worried about the final chapter. the book is mainly court room back & forth which doesn't really translate well to screen but the trailer looks good. . .

Just don't rent this whatever you do! Low budget? Try no budget. Worse 'acting' & storyline than the most amateur of porn.