Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1121 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-01-14
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A sweet, silly and sincere comedy, Saving Grace resembles a Cheech and Chong pothead comedy, only instead of two scruffy lowlifes the film is about an aimless Scottish gardener and a middle-aged widow with a green thumb. Grace (Brenda Blethyn of Secrets and Lies and Little Voice) has just discovered that her recently deceased husband has left her with an enormous debt when her gardener Matthew (Craig Ferguson, The Big Tease) asks her to help him tend to his small, personal-use marijuana crop. Grace soon realises that they can turn her greenhouse into a hydroponics laboratory and turn out a profitable crop--if only they can keep the local constables at bay and then find a dealer to sell the stuff. Saving Grace has well-developed characters, intelligent dialogue, a charming and capable cast and clean, clear direction. But at heart it's still a marijuana comedy, with most of its funniest moments coming from the silly, stoned behaviour of elderly ladies and others. Nothing wrong with that, and Blethyn and Ferguson give the film a strong anchor. The ending goes a little over the top, but most of the film is well-grounded in genuine human behaviour. A sub-plot about Matthew's girlfriend's pregnancy is treated with respect and integrity. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Synopsis
SAVING GRACE is genuinely funny British comedy about Grace, a recently widowed woman who risks losing her wonderful estate and beautiful garden because of the huge debts her husband left when he died. To cure her financial ailments, she uses her horticultural talent to raise--and then sell--marijuana plants. But, when Grace gets herself caught between the police, some serious London drug pushers, and the real estate agents who have a claim on the estate, audiences will certainly turn a blind eye to the law in order to "save Grace."

Customer Reviews

did we see the same film?
Perhaps I don't have a sense of humour after all, but I'm astonished by the rave reviews for this slight piece of nonsense. The film starts well and is lovely to look at, but rapidly degenerates into not-very-funny farce. Giggly elderly ladies who mistake pot plants for tea, anyone?
Let's put aside the fact that Grace could have solved her financial woes at a stroke - and probably secured her future- by selling her huge, gorgeous pile in a prime Cornish property hotspot. Let's pretend it's far easier to set up a cannabis factory in a greenhouse often visited by the ladies of the WI....
Some of the early scenes are sweet but by the time Grace heads to London in search of a Mr Big on whom to offload her 20 kilos of weed, the whole thing loses the plot. Bill Bailey does deserve an honourable mention for his small-time dealer cameo, though.
The final scenes are so juvenile I can only imagine what the writers were doing when they came up with them ....
I'm normally a sucker for light and fluffy movies, but not this one. Brenda Blethyn does a good job with the material she has, but it's not her finest hour.

"A Joint Venture"
In a quaint Cornish village, local matron and horticulturalist Grace Trevethyn (Brenda Blethyn) finds herself a new widow with an insurmountable pile of debt. The whole town commiserates with Grace's predicament, but it is Matthew (Craig Ferguson), her gardener, who comes up with a sure-fire plot to raise money for both of them: He will take his few, sickly pot plants to her fancy greenhouse, grow the plants with hydroponics, and make a fortune for both of them!

This really sweet and funny comedy was written, produced by, and stars the irrepressible Craig Ferguson, of late night TV fame. He's quite charming as the gardener who tries to help Grace get back on her feet, financially and emotionally. Brenda Blethyn is perfect as the respectable lady who's all business when it comes to saving her manor and even goes to a London street market to peddle her wares.

The local folk are delightfully eccentric and there's a lot of homey appeal that makes you root for Grace and Matthew regardless of the legalities. The pace grows quite chaotic toward the end but I happily recommend this satisfying British gem.

A single-joke film that ends in unfunny silliness
This is a mildly funny film that helps to pass an evening away, provided that one has nothing better to do. Inheritor of a rambling manor house in a delightfully postcard-picturesque Cornish village, the recently widowed Grace (Brenda Blethyn) finds that she has been left with massive debts by her rascally husband, and resorts to growing cannabis plants as a means of raising the substantial funds that are needed to wipe the slate clean. The single running gag - and it runs and runs until it wilts from exhaustion - is the image of the ever-so-genteel English middle class widow mass-cultivating the well-known naughty herb in her greenhouse. In this potty enterprise, the heroine is assisted by her gardener (Craig Ferguson) and by a full and meticulously-assembled cast of "hilariously eccentric" village characters. There are some very amusing moments here and there, but the already fragile plot starts to wobble badly when Grace goes to London in search of drug dealers, and the whole enterprise finally collapses in a concluding episode of juvenile silliness. I suspect that for most people, Saving Grace is too slight to withstand repeated viewing - unless, of course, a few spliffs are on hand to make it seem much funnier than it is in reality. For non-addicts, watch it on television, but don't bother to buy the DVD.