The Young Visiters

Amazon.com

This peculiar and delightful BBC movie springs from an equally peculiar and delightful novel written in 1890 by a 9-year-old girl and published with her spelling left uncorrected--hence the title, The Young Visiters. Mr. Alfred Salteena (Jim Broadbent, Topsy-Turvy) falls in love with an ambitious young beauty named Ethel (Lyndsey Marshal, The Hours), who only agrees to visit the clumsy and unctuous Alfred if he introduces her to nobility. Alfred cajoles an invitation from Lord Bernard Clark (Hugh Laurie, Stuart Little), whose own interest in Ethel leads him to send Alfred off for lessons in manners, launching Alfred on his own road to high status. The story's mixture of offhand naivete and precocious insights into class results in something daft, funny, and thoroughly charming. Also featuring a delicious turn by Bill Nighy (Love Actually) as the earl who agrees to "rub up" Alfred. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Academy Award-winner Jim Broadbent stars as Alfred Salteena, 'an elderly man of 42,' who falls in love with young Ethel Monticue at first sight. To impress her, he treats Ethel to a visit at the sumptuous country house of Lord Bernard Clark, the only lord Alf actually knows. Their ensuing adventures in London's colorful high society reveal the young author's alarmingly keen insights into class, the foolishness of adults and the power that young girls have over men.

DVD Features:
Biographies:Cast/Author bio screens
Featurette:Behind-the-scenes featurette

Customer Reviews:

Truly Original.......2006-01-26

When I first heard of this story through watching the US version of BBC I knew I had to watch carefully so I wouldn't miss the show! I'm so glad to be able to get this on DVD. The story is absolutely charming. I love the scene where Ethel is dancing with the three young men. I also enjoyed watching actors who aren't all Hollywood plastic. Ethel has got to be four and a half feet tall or maybe she's exactly 5 ft. I love one of the last lines. "Ethel grew quite a buldgy figure but her husband loved her anyway." Charming!

Missed the point.......2005-07-27

This is the second time Daisy Ashford's famous book has been filmed for UK television. Sadly, this is the less succesful version. The whole appeal of the original book was seeing and hearing about the world through the words of a nine year old Victorian girl. Her unique spelling, opinions and ideas - mostly romantic notions about how adults in love behave - make for hilarious reading.

This BBC TV production changes much of the original material to suit it's own purposes, which completely obliterates the artless innocence of the book. Worse still, they have actually made up new lines, supposedly in the style of the original book, and yet actually left out many of Daisy's original and memorable lines of dialogue along the way! They have also added new characters and even devised new mis-spellings that Daisy Ashford never included...what a mistake! It's impossible to embellish a piece of work as original as "The Young Visiters" just for the purposes of padding it out into a full length movie...it's a unique piece of work that sprung from the mind of a nine year old girl, and written circa 1890 - what script writer today could possible emulate that with sufficient accuracy?! So, the overall result is a mildly amusing but perplexing comedy of manners with the characters delivering odd speeches and unfathomable mannerisms, and seemingly unable to spell when they write letters to each other. As a TV programme, it just doesn't make the charm of the book come to life.

The previous version was made way back in 1984 and seems to have disappeared completely now, but it was in fact better than this effort, plus it starred Tracey Ullman, who was hilariously well cast as the pompous Ethel. And the cast got to concentrate much more on the original immortal dialogue, unlike those roped into this mess. None of the humour stands out in the new version, even though it has a stirling cast and a big budget. If you watch this and enjoy it, that's great, but in my opinion the spirit of Daisy Ashford's book has been all but wrung out of it.

This Movie is Hilarious and Heart-Warming..........2004-11-05

I was delightfully surprised at how funny and touching this movie is. The movie seems as though it is straight out of Tim Burton's mind. Very entertaining and such a fantasy. You need to show your family this movie.

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