My Life So Far **½ (1999, Colin Firth, Rosemary Harris, Malcolm McDowell, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Irène Jacob, Robert Norman, Tchéky Karyo) – Classic Movie Review 1270

In 1999 Hugh Hudson directed My Life So Far, a bittersweet film that covers the start of a boy’s life during the early 20th century. Colin Firth gives a typically attractive star turn as the inventor father

Director Hugh Hudson’s 1999 film is a colourful and sincere but slightly plodding drama chronicling the trials facing an inventor father, Edward Pettigrew (Colin Firth), and his 10-year-old son, Fraser (Robert Norman), living with the rest of a large, eccentric family on a Scottish estate after World War One.

Rosemary Harris plays the family’s matriarch who rules them sternly and Malcolm McDowell is the boy’s uncle Morris, who is threatening to evict them all.

With a screenplay by Simon Donald, it is based on the autobiographical book Son of Adam by Denis Forman, one-time boss of Granada TV and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. These are the sensitive but dour and sometimes pretty dull real-life memoirs of a Scots childhood in the 1920s and 1930s. Still, a very good, eager-to-please cast, an excellent director and a fine cinematographer (Bernard Lutic) are at its disposal, so it is a highly professional, interesting effort.

Firth gives a typically attractive, sturdy and effectively laid-back star turn, keeping the interest level high, even if he is none-too-Scottish-seeming.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Irène Jacob, Robert Norman and Tchéky Karyo co-star.

It cost $7 million but took only $635,620 at the box office, despite kind reviews from critics.

Hudson next directed I Dreamed of Africa (2000), the closing film of the Cannes Film Festival.

The cast are Colin Firth as Edward Pettigrew, Rosemary Harris as Gamma MacIntosh, Irène Jacob as Aunt Heloise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Moira ‘Mumsie’ Pettigrew, Malcolm McDowell as Uncle Morris MacIntosh, Robert Norman as Fraser Pettigrew, Tchéky Karyo as Gabriel Chenoux, Kelly Macdonald as Elspeth Pettigrew, Titus MacTavish as village boy, Jamie MacTavish as a gardener, and Douglas Forrest as Colin Firth body double.

Denis Forman died on February 24 2013, aged 95.

Hugh Hudson died at Charing Cross Hospital in London on 10 February 2023, aged 86.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1270

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/