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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Catherine Shoard

Golden Years review – pensioners-turn-crims comedy

Hold-up hacks … Golden Years.
Hold-up hacks … Golden Years

“Banks, bowls … and bingo” is the tagline of the pensioners-turn-crims comedy – and it’s cack-handedness offers an early clue to the botched plot and groaning dialogue to come (the script is courtesy of DIY SOS star Nick Knowles). Bernard Hill and Virginia McKenna play Arthur and Martha Good – again, a bad sign, that – whose happy retirement is threatened after his pension pot is suddenly depleted. Erratic slapstick involving a shopping trolley means Arthur inadvertently robs a security guard, then continues his spree after he realises he’s due it all really and he can bail out similarly disenfranchised pals – including Simon Callow as a Welsh am-dram aficionado who gets his bum out and Una Stubbs as his sex-starved missus. There are the seeds of something interesting here, but premise and talent are ill-served by crude and cliched characterisation and thudding execution, which serves to make this almost as gruelling a watch as Son of Saul.

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