Keeley Hawkes and Hugh Bonneville are decent as the actor and children’s author who daughter died aged seven, but there is no real howl of painThe unbearable grief of losing a child is a difficult subject for any movie to encompass – and it defeats this decently acted but syrupy, glib drama about the early married life of movie star Patricia Neal and children’s author Roald Dahl, whose seven-year-old daughter Olivia died in 1962 of encephalitis due to measles.
Despite the best intentions, To Olivia winds up creating a carpet of eggshells for its audience to walk across.The film suggests the family were brought closer together by this catastrophe, resulting in Neal gaining new emotional intelligence for her acting and Dahl being able to accept creative comments on his work from his family, and so getting crucial improvements for his 1964 hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Maybe – or
Read full article