Film

Grow Your Own

Cert: PG

Description: Soft-hearted screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce targets the green unpleasant lands of little England in this bittersweet comedy about refugees trying to settle down (and garden) in the urban north-west.

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Dir: Richard Laxton.

Cast: Benedict Wong, Diveen Henry, Philip Jackson, Eddie Marsan, Omid Djalili

Country: UK.

Year: 2007.

Duration: 101mins

Digs and discontent

John Henshaw, Alan Williams and Pearce Quigley

Charlie, Kenny and Eddie plot against their allotment committee chair

By Derek Malcolm
15 Jun 2007

Richard Laxton's film takes us through a year in the life of a Liverpudlian allotment where a group of fictional characters struggle against a committee chairman (Philip Jackson) who sets restrictive rules in an attempt to prevent undeserving interlopers, a telephone company trying for a mast on the site, and individuals who won't toe the line.

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Carl Hunter, Grow Your Own clearly intends to use the allotment as a microcosm of society and has gentle, sometimes whimsical digs at present discontents.

Affectionate and heartwarming it will seem to those who enjoy this sort of thing; painfully slow and dramatically inert might be the criticism of doubters.

But at least some of the characters make their mark, notably Eddie Marsan as the chairman's son.