The Young Visiters

Click on title above for particulars about this movie.

This felt like a strange movie to me. It wasn't bad, but I'm stumped what to say good about it. But being a highly wordy person, I will try.

To start, it's not like any other movie I've seen (I skipped the Johnny Depp version of Alice in Wonderland as too bizarre for me. And too animated.) Visiters was remotely similar, I suppose, but not intended as bizarre. More in the cute category.

Jim Broadbent pays the main character and since he is in every other British movie he's evidently a big star. It also stars Hugh Laurie (of House fame), Lyndsey Marshal who's fabulous, and Bill Nighy who is also magnificent as a character actor--I hardly recognized him, though I did in the Pirates movies (joking,of course.)

It's refreshing to see films starring normal-looking people instead of beautiful-eyed, glistening-toothed, muscular hero-actors young enough to be my grandsons. (Except Miss Marshal who's pretty and by no means too old to be my granddaughter. And her costumes and acting weren't bad either.)

I saw Broadbent recently as title character in Longford. Everyone was good and he was exceptionally good. He probably won some sort of award for it.

Visiters was based on a book written by 9-year old Daisy Ashford. It has all the qualities of romance and royalty (characters, settings and costumes) as understood by a nine-year old.

This circumstance creates a strange humor--maybe not laugh-out-loud funny, but witty humor with a large dose of silliness we have come to know and love (?) in British movies (think of Hyacinth Bucket for example.)

If you want a break from inane American TV sitcoms, computer-graphics or severely obscure feature length films, rent Visiters. It's not exactly The Tudors, but very British and refreshingly different than the usual fare dished up to American viewers--meaning viewers who still possess a sense of humor not the comatose ones who can stick to their reruns of WWF SmackDown and My Name is Earl.

PS: I didn't misspell Visiters. It was Daisy's way. In addition, it's not a kid-movie. It's a look at the world through the eyes of a child and would be baffling to a child that already sees the world like that.