Pubdate: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 Source: Albany Times Union (NY) Copyright: 2000, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, Contact: http://www.timesunion.com/ Author: Amy Biancolli GOING TO POT 'Saving Grace' Lights Up With Quirks, Qualms Let's say it up front: This is a feel-good movie about drug cultivation. If you have any prohibitive moral qualms that won't allow you to laugh (or, more to the point, feel good) about a slightly doddery Cornishwoman growing her own weed, don't plan to see it. Don't go near it. Just. Say. No. Otherwise, respond with quaint hallelujahs to "Saving Grace,'' a sweet, nimbly amusing small-town conspiracy farce in the tradition of "Local Hero'' or "Waking Ned Devine.'' While everything gets wrapped up a bit too snugly at the end, Nigel Cole's ode to civil disobedience leaves a fuzzy afterglow that has nothing to do with odoriferous fumes. It's an aw-shucks film for frustrated drug-runners. "Saving Grace'' (which opens today) works for several reasons, chief among them the quavering gifts of its star, Brenda Blethyn. Blethyn, best known to American audiences for her Oscar-nominated performance as a shattered mother in "Secrets & Lies,'' is an actor of great intensity, idiosyncracy and fire, but here, she's banked the intensity so that only a warm brush of quirkiness peeks through. She's just the sort of flaky dame you'd expect to turn her greenhouse into a pot farm. Blethyn plays Grace Trevethyn, a recently widowed Englishwoman whose late skunk of a husband left her with no money and an estate so thoroughly in hock that she can't even pay Matthew, a blithe Scottish handyman (co-screenwriter Craig Ferguson) with certain horticultural proclivities. When Matthew asks her to help him salvage a couple of drooping cannabis plants, her startled reluctance yields, ultimately, to her innate gardener's sympathy for vegetable matter. ("I'm a gardener -- these are sick plants,'' she explains). Grace and Matthew move a couple of plants into her greenhouse. She nurtures them. They thrive. Later, in a moment of pure Cheech & Chong revelation, she realizes she could wipe out all of her money problems in one fell swoop if she converted her greenhouse into a mass-scale marijuana ranch. She ropes Matthew into her plan. She employs hydroponic solutions and lights of blinding wattage. And the little green leaves, they grow. So much of this is so adorable; when Matthew refers to his partner-in-crime as "Dame reggae spliff,'' the incongruity of it hits like a bong -- I mean, gong. As expected, cute old coots intake their fair share of reefer, often inadvertently. They get the munchies, they giggle, they run around naked, they wear silly, silly costumes and say silly, silly things. In its final act, Ferguson's and Mark Crowdy's screenplay relies heavily on this sort of gramps-gets-bombed scenario and, while it draws plenty of laughs, it lacks the ludicrous gentility of the film's best moments. "You're not a scum -- that worries me,'' hisses a drug kingpin at his eager new supplier. "I take exception to that,'' Grace snaps in reply. "I come from a long line of scum.'' Cole, an established British TV director, brings whimsy and pacing to his debut feature, giving his cast plenty of room to get squiffy. There are several fine actors in small roles: Phyllida Law (Emma Thompson's mother) as a village shop owner, Martin Clunes as a doctor with high (way high) ideals, Leslie Phillips as a sweet old vicar with a fondness for Hammer Studio horror films of the 1950s and '60s. Ferguson, known on these shores as Nigel Wick from "The Drew Carey Show,'' has a saw-toothed charisma that provides a lovely balance to Blethyn's plucky Grace. And Blethyn -- Blethyn's a dream, whether she's goggled up in her greenhouse or evading the stuffy banker who's after her manor home. She's the unlikely star of an unlikely pothead movie, a film that makes lighting up seem as cozily unthreatening as a walk in the Cornish dusk. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart