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