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MOVIE REVIEW: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Garth Cremona (RIP)

Lily James stars as a writer during the 1940’s.  Juliet’s book has been a success during the war and after the war she has become a slight celebrity.  Now she wants to branch out and write something different while dealing with her own demons of her war-time experience.  When a young man from Guernsey writes to her looking for a copy of a book and telling her how the book club on their island began life Juliet ventures to the island.  First she gets engaged to her American boyfriend and puts off the signings that her publisher has arranged.  What she finds on the island will change her life forever.

We see a lot of movies based on the World Wars, with different levels of success, and they can be either factual or fiction based.  What I like is something that I haven’t seen before.  Last year I watched a few films which basically showed the same events in different ways with the actors changed around.  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a different take on the second World War story that shows the British spirit that the PR machines tried to push.

Guernsey, because of its location, was an island that the German forces were able to occupy.  Turning the island into a prison for those who lived there and a fortress for the Nazi invaders.  People always seem to forget that for a lot of the second World War the Germans had the upper hand.  The German forces stole the pigs that the farmers were rearing and left the locals on the island on severe rationing.  The book group forms when one of the islanders hid a pig and invited some of her friends over for a dinner party to eat the pork, but on their way home the group are stopped by the German Army and have to come up with a reason that they are grouped together after curfew.  When Lily James ventures into their story and the aftermath of the war she finds a bond that can’t be broken between the friends and a story that she longs to write.

Right this is a history lesson with a romantic story in the background, and the biggest problem that I have is that the love triangle didn’t really work, there just wasn’t enough given to the different couplings.  This was because the history of what happened on the island with the different characters, which had to be in there, takes up so much of the film.

What lead me to enjoy the film is that the casting of the film was about as good as you can get for these types of romantic comedies.  Lily is probably the best that she’s been in a long time with her character leading us through the minefields of the island and their physical, emotional, and landscaped scars.  Around her is a team of performers that give her so much support she’s able to lead this movie.  Tom Courtenay, Glen Powell, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, and Penelope Wilton all give their talents to the best they can to make the film feel authentic.

While this is a date night movie the history behind it, and the dramatic hidden story that Juliet has to uncover, gives it more than the usual rom com drama.  It’s far from perfect as there are some performances that just didn’t work for me, and the script finds it hard to balance the romance and the history.  It would have been better suited being a three-hour three-part TV special with more depth being given to the characters.  But as it is this is the date night movie that if I suggested to my partner that we go to I would win major brownie points.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Director: Mike Newell
Writers: Kevin Hood (screenplay by), Thomas Bezucha (screenplay) | 3 more credits »
Stars: Lily James, Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Findlay | See full cast & crew

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Author Profile

Garth Cremona (RIP)
Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com
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