Rag Tale (2005)

User Rating:

3.9/10   

Director:

Mary McGuckian

Writer:

Mary McGuckian (writer)

Release Date:

7 October 2005 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance | Drama

Tagline:

Get a handle on the scandal.

Plot:

A romance that plays out in the splashy, sensational world of British tabloids. |

Plot Keywords:

Nude Model | Satire | Female Nudity

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Rupert Graves	...	Eddy Taylor
Malcolm McDowell	...	Richard Morton
Jennifer Jason Leigh	...	Mary Josephine 'MJ' Morton
Bill Paterson	...	Lucky Lloyd
Ian Hart	...	Morph
Lucy Davis	...	Debbs
Sara Stockbridge	...	Sally May
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Simon Callow	...	Fat Boy
Kerry Fox	...	Peach James Taylor
David Hayman	...	P3
Tom Leick	...	Peach's Personal Assistant
Cal Macaninch	...	Mac
Julian Nest	...	Court Advisor
Steve Preston	...	Court Advisor
Thomas Sanne	...	Royal Advisor
John Sessions	...	Felix Sty

Runtime:

123 min

Country:

Luxembourg | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Ireland:18 | Australia:MA | UK:15

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Carousel Picture Company, The

Watch drop the dead donkey instead....

This is a shame. Great cast (why aren't these people on our screens all the time?), completely wasted. The direction in this movie is the worst I've ever had the misfortune to see - the camera is constantly moving, often rotating round so actors are at angles, or zooming. Combined with extremely quick editing, it makes it difficult to tell which actor is which, let alone what their facial expressions are. This would be excusable perhaps if an inexperienced director tried it for one scene, but it's the entire movie. I suppose the attempt is to convey the pressure and fast pace of a newsroom: instead, it conveyed to me a headache (a good director would allow the actors to do some of the conveying emotion: the direction more or less screams look at me in every scene, to the extent the participant I was most aware of was the camera).

Putting aside the direction, the improvised script does not produce a comedy. The cast do a good job of conveying some relationships between the group, some amusing, but really asking them to improvise a script of one liners in a few weeks was always insane and this really could have used a decent scriptwriter. The audience I was in laughed twice. The original concept isn't bad, the cast try hard and are good, but the director never gives them the chance to salvage this. Avoid.