Savage House review – Claire Foy and Richard E Grant sell it hard in bewigged 18th-century caper

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The leads are the most watchable thing in this raucous period yarn about a grimy pair of status-obsessed nobles Black-belt performances from Claire Foy and Richard E Grant put some vim and vigour into this haranguingly one-note and unidirectional period romp of the raucously bewigged and be-poxed 18th century. It’s written and directed by American film-maker Peter Glanz, who gives us candlelit interiors like a knockoff Barry Lyndon, and periodic deafening orchestral stabs with a touch of Amadeus as furious people in costume storm down corridors. But Grant and Foy are always there, selling it hard and there are one or two nice lines. They play Sir Chauncey and Lady Savage, who are living in a vast crumbling country estate: he’s a parvenu, an adventurer, a lover of the new Hanover dispensation who loathes Jacobites, but fundamentally a social alpinist who married for money and took his wife’s noble name. She was entranced by his roguish ways and she forgave him everything but is, however...
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Arthur’s Whisky review – Diane Keaton and Lulu in enjoyable body-change comedy

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A magic potion de-ages three women in an enjoyably middling drama-comedy with Patricia Hodge alongside Keaton and Lulu

Viciously anodyne but not entirely unamusing, this older-folk-skewed comedy puts a gentle spin on a well-worn device, the magical-body transformation. In some genteel corner of England, retirees Joan and Arthur are leading a life of quiet resignation. She does gardening and whatnot; he potters with inventions in his shed. One night, his latest concoction, a formula mixed with whisky that will de-age a person back to the body she or he had in her or his early 20s, actually works. Arthur goes outside to holler triumphantly during a storm and gets struck by lightning, leaving Joan a widow.

After the funeral, Joan (Patricia Hodge) and her two best friends, crafty divorcee Linda (Diane Keaton) and baking-obsessive Susan (Lulu), get stuck into the whisky/youthifying brew and wake up looking like the lithe young women they once were, played by three new actors: Esme Lonsdale as young Joan, Genevieve Gaunt as young Linda and Hannah Howland as young Susan. After a predictable bout of screaming and working out that the effect doesn’t last more than six hours, they soon start to enjoy feeling stronger and healthier. (There’s a funny gag that has Linda just repeatedly getting out of a chair and sitting down again, burbling with delight in finding it doesn’t hurt.)

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