A cringingly bad entry into the senior film market – Golden Years is best avoided
“Cucumber ready
And I’ve got my banana”
Directed by John Miller and written by Miller, Nick Knowles (yes, that Nick Knowles) and Jeremy Sheldon, 2016’s Golden Years certainly seeks to capitalise on that Best Exotic Marigold momentum but to little avail. There’s no shame in being a second division entry here (the cast is less Dench, Nighy and Smith than Hill, McKenna and Callow) but there’s no excuse for the second-rate material that they are forced to deliver.
The script is uncertainly pitched around an Ealing comedy farcical note but the writers just don’t have the chops to pull that off, resulting in leaden humour and a lugubrious sense of pace that is truly nullifying. And Miller’s direction is too heavy-footed to allow the slapstick moments to really fly. Against all of this, the cast can do little to enliven a film that would be better left in the bank vaults.
