Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War (2002)

Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War (2002). 1h 46m

“The best comedy is often based on something real. This gives the audience something it can relate to and can provide a real bite to the comedy. The topic may not be funny, as is the case in this movie about how we can mistreat our elderly. But by finding the humour in the subject and poking fun at it, it makes the audience acknowledge the topic, even if only briefly.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe movie is the story of Mrs Caldicot and her fight against bullies for the right to be her own person. It is about the triumph of the u0026#39;little womanu0026#39;, that is in the sense of common ordinary folk, although it is also the sort of condescending description that her late unlamented husband may well have used to describe her.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe movie is, however, a caricature, with no shades of grey. The bad guys are so completely bad, the rest home is so horrible, and Mrs Caldicot wins so overwhelmingly. She even ends with a romantic interest. The film makers had evidently decided that as the movie had moved well away from reality, much like several of the inmates at the rest home, they felt no need for any restraint in devising a happy ending. The saddest thing about the film is that even though rest homes are not, I hope, as bad as portrayed, we often do not treat our elderly as well as we could, and in real life there is no happy ending.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, the movie does not pretend to be anything but a light-hearted comedy. It was always amusing and at times extremely funny. Who would have thought that seeing one of the characters placing a newspaper over his fac e could have been so funny, and there was a delicious irony in the situation he had found himself in. Many of the people in the audience I shared the theatre with were on the mature side of life (alright, old) and they found the movie highly amusing, perhaps because it had a particular resonance for them. They also laughed at several jokes that went right over my head. Never mind, my time will come soon enough.”