Atul and Vina are celebrating their marriage. However, a honeymoon spent with his parents was not part of their plans. Thoughtless patriarch Eeshwar seems determined to emasculate and embarrass his son. As the weeks pass, consummating their union becomes an impossibility that threatens the couples entire future.
The performances are excellent though: Meera Syal and Harish Patel reprise their roles from the stage production with evident relish, and Reece Ritchie and Amara Karan are charmingly sincere and easy to root for as the young couple who know very little about sex, a rare and refreshing sight in contemporary cinema.
Crummy, contrived and apparently endless.
The combined talents of Calendar Girls' Nigel Cole and East Is East's Ayub Khan Din should be a marriage made in heaven - or at least the north of England - but, for all its gentle drama and nicely-judged performances, this has some work to do to match the sleeper status of those films.
There’s rather too much contrived argy-bargy and I wasn’t quite sure what the moral was (have sex before marriage?) but the performances are strong, especially from Patel and Syal, and there are plenty of laughs.
The soft-edged comedy clashes badly with heavyweight dramatic interludes that seem to come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast.
Its stagey mix of East Is East-style father/ son conflict and bouncy bedroom farce is endearing, though a tad stereotyped.
About sexual tension yet without sexual tension. Someone dropped the ball.
While Ritchie and Karan offer up charming performances, their characters could use more depth: the romantic complications feel sudden without much psychological insight.
Impossible not to be charmed by the opening setpiece – broad Lancashire accents amid the exotic plumage of Indian wedding wear – but thereafter the writing is patchy at best, its antagonisms predictable and its reconciliations way too pat. Ritchie and Karan as the pressured couple are touching, nonetheless.
The couple, played by Reece Ritchie and Amara Karan, are likable, but the movie’s most poignant relationship is between Atul and his father, played with gleeful abandon by Harish Patel.
The acting is solid and attentive throughout, with a breakthrough role for Karan as the lovely Vina. But Patel’s terrific, roaring performance as the overbearing but vulnerable patriarch leaves everyone else in the shade.
Light, but likeable.
All In Good Time moves so slowly that the title starts to seem ironic.
Touching, likable.
That first flush of romance
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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