Grow Your Own (2007)

Critic Reviews

• Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile

  It's what could be termed a gentle comedy, this story about immigrants trying to blend into the fabric of rural British society; a routinely pleasant small comedy that explores Britain's immigration issues and relevant enough to touch a nerve anywhere

• Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film

  This derivative drama might have worked quite well as a four-part mini Sunday night series for the BBC. As a film, however, it fails on almost every count.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Average comedy-drama that's not as moving or as funny as it thinks it is, but remains watchable thanks to strong performances and likeable characters.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  Affectionate and heartwarming it will seem to those who enjoy this sort of thing; painfully slow and dramatically inert might be the criticism of doubters.

• , Daily Mail [UK]

  Director Nimrod Attal manages the setting-up of this situation with some skill, but it's never developed. Nor are any of the characters.

• Tom Hawker, Total Film

  Grow Your Own has about as much edge as a prize melon, but even if the land's been well filled, there's still plenty of fertile soil here. Occasionally melancholy, often funny, this is touching, lyrical home-grown fare.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  One could wish that this parable of difference and tolerance gladdened the heart, but its effortful comedy has quite the opposite effect. It's just weedy.

• Johnny Vaughan, Sun Online

  This film is more Ground Force than ground-breaking. Watch it on DVD with a nice cup of tea.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  With its chirpy score, lovable characters and Festival Of Britain flavour, Grow Your Own would have bedded in nicely as a TV movie. On the big screen, it starts to wilt.

• Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

  It's a shame for John Pilger that The War on Democracy, his documentary about how Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez is a symbol of the growth of people power in Latin America, is being released at a time when Chávez has shut down TV companies that oppose him.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  Well-intentioned, and well-cast, this British movie is nonetheless desperately underpowered.

• Kevin Maher, Times [UK]

  The movie seems at times so impressed by its own allegory that it lessens the human drama running beneath it.

• Leigh Singer, Film4

  A gentle, astute, life-affirming British comedy. Dig in.

• Catherine Chambers, BBC

  Hence, while it works as an antidote to the gritty realism of recent British films, Grow Your Own's twee optimism is sometimes a little too much to digest.

• Dan Jolin, Empire Magazine

  Plenty of over-British Britishness in this predictable drama.

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  Director Richard Laxton offers nothing to convince that we shouldn't be watching this one-off drama on the box on a Sunday night with one eye closed. More meat and less veg please

Read all 16 critic reviews