More proof that Richard Curtis’s style of comedy-drama is very difficult to imitate. This placid, silver-years heartwarmer, set in a picturesque and pricey part of the capital – in this case, Hampstead – is pretty obviously inspired by Curtis’s 1999 hit Notting Hill, though actually taken from the true-life case of Harry Hallowes, a reclusive man who in 2007 claimed squatter’s rights to a patch of ground in Hampstead Heath in London where he’d set up camp and legally saw off some property developers who’d tried to oust him.
This movie casts Brendan Gleeson as Harry – renamed Donald – and invents a quirky American widow called Emily, played by Diane Keaton, who falls in love with him. This movie has some decent moments, and its scepticism about property moguls is something that will chime with many right now. The cast all do an honest job: Phil Davis has a punchy cameo and Jason Watkins plays a creepy accountant with romantic designs on Emily. It is genuinely funny when he reveals his toe-curling hobby: he is the leader of a ukulele orchestra who perform at Emily’s birthday party. But there is something so treacly and fundamentally unconvincing about the relationship itself and the ending is weirdly fudged, quite divorced from the real-life case of Hallowes.
