Far from Sparkling

Sjhm

Dreadful, slow, flabby, "modern" updating of Agatha Christie's novel. The entire story could have been over and done with in under an hour, but this bloated modern monstrosity drags on for over two.

The problem with "updating" the storyline into the modern idiom of footballers and self-made men is that the social structure in which the original story was written has no modern equivalent. So there is no hook upon which to hang the theme.

Oliver Ford-Davies and Pauline Collins drift around in the middle of this background-less mess and there is a lot of vague talk about spies and Berlin and Cambridge. I was uncertain at one point exactly what I was watching, a bad Agatha Christie or an even worse John Le Carre.

With a script that makes little sense, and the addition of a cloyingly annoying grandchild, this is truly flat champagne.

score 1/10

Sjhm 11 July 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2277276/