List Price: $19.98You Pay Only: $17.99 You Save: $1.99 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780780650510
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780650514
Label: New Line Home Video
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 19, 2005
Running Time: 113 minutes
Sales Rank: 20237
Studio: New Line Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: July 21, 1995
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman star in director Mike Newell's (Four Weddings and a Funeral) engaging comedy about a star-struck young girl lured into the grown-up world of the theater. From a crush on the company's heartless director to her first sexual encounter with the show's biggest star young Stella Bradshaw quickly discovers what it takes to make it in the theater. An intriguing blend of comedy and passion this provocative story is a hilarious look at what really goes on when the lights go down.Running Time: 113 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 794043785825
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Some more Rickman, please...
Like others have said, I was surprised that it was not a light-hearted comedy and disappointed that Alan Rickman's character doesn't arrive until halfway through; but it was wonderfully cast and though very disturbing, I feel it needs to watched again.
Rating:  - A very quiet classic.
I've loved this movie for years, and bought the DVD as soon as it was released. As other reviewers have said, the cover copy is completely misleading. It's a tragedy of sad, warped lives, with bits of humor, some of it black, thrown into the mix. To get an idea of Georgina Cates's amazing versatility, I recommend Clay Pigeons.
Rating:  - An Awfully Big Role for Rickman, which he handles extraordinarily well
Eager for more Alan Rickman (Die Hard, AHarry Potter 1-5) goodness, I watched An Awfully Big Adventure.
Unfortunately, even though Alan Rickman gets top billing for this picture, he doesn't appear in it until a good half an hour into it. When he does, Rickman commands the stage (literally and as part of the movie's plot). There is one particular look that Rickman shoots Hugh Grant's character that alone makes it worth watching the rest of the two-hour movie. Rickman's performance never falls below excellence and his portrayal of Hook is mesmerizing (and the bits that we see of his stage role are more powerful than even when Dustin Hoffman played the famous pirate in Hook.
Georgina Cates' first major movie performance is impressive because she is able to match Rickman's intensity and bring about pure innocence to her character. Furthermore, at 20, she looks much younger than her 16-year-old character.
Mike Newell's direction is impressive in this film. And the costumes are authentic for the period.
Seeing the backstage of the late 1940s theater makes for an interesting drama, but more so makes the revelation more plausible, although it is highly predictable and as Dickensian as it is soap operaish. All, in all, a must-see film for anyone who has ever fallen under Rickman's spell.
Rating: - Roar Of The Greasepaint, Smell Of The Crowd
Here is a film that enthusiastically supports the negative stereotypes of "theatre people" cherished by hod carriers, gravediggers, truck mechanics, and short order cooks. It concerns a bottom of the barrel local stage company in post-war Liverpool, which functions as a repository of wretched refuse unable to find work in better venues. Virtually every despised group is represented; the troupe is teeming with homosexuals, alcoholics, cruel narcissists, manipulative wretches, and those guilty of sex crimes involving minors both male and female. We do not find people to like in this film, we only find people to pity - like Bunny, portrayed brilliantly by Peter Firth - and Stella, the tragically damaged and clueless protagonist. Georgina Cates is thoroughly convincing as Stella, yet another young girl who flees a harsh reality for the theatre's comforting deceptions.
I was amazed to discover that the trailer for this movie presented it as a comedy - Hamlet is funnier. Even the illusion of happiness - the theatre's stock and trade - is missing. What we have instead is a world where people play roles without knowing it, and are emotionally mugged in the process. The ringleader of this horror show is Meredith Potter; Hugh Grant is exceptionally good. (This movie was made before Grant found his niche as an affable cad and is certainly his best bit of acting ever.) Potter is the apogee of upper class English entitlement gone to seed; he is clever, thoroughly decadent, lacking in anything ... Read More
Rating: - Hugh Grant Acts, Shock Horror!
In the days before Hugh Grant became a romantic comedy icon, it turns out that he could act, and act he does in this marvellous little vignette period-piece. Here he plays an effete theater director with a penchant for picking up men and then discarding them in the cruellest possible manner. He has assembled, for a short repertory season in the Liverpool of 1957, a cast of has-beens, alcoholics, and other assorted misfits, including the naif fourtnee-year-old Stella who dreams of becoming a posh starlet.
The supporting cast all turn in solid performances, but what really brings the film alive is when Alan Rickman steps into the story about one-third of the way in. This is Rickman in his prime: electrifying, nuanced, darkly compelling yet subtly self-mocking at the same time. It is exceedingly difficult for an actor to play an actor, because the "visible ham" element can too easily become, accidentally, "risible ham." The entire cast generally manage to pull off this balancing act par excellence, but Rickman does it best of all. He exudes sexuality even when dressed as Captain Hook in the pantomime version of Peter Pan. It's no surprise that several of the ladies of the cast would like to rekindle old acquaintances.
But the Rickman character's tragic secret (he believes he has a son, born to him many years before by a woman he knew only as Stella Maris) turns Greek-tragedy like into his denouement. The naif Stella, whom he seduces almost instantly because he is drawn to her ... Read More
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