Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

runamokprods A BBC Play of the Month. A good example of Chekhov's cheerful skewering of the upper and bourgeois classes with wit, edge and humor. Very impressive for a first full length play (although I've read this two hour version is edited way down from a script almost 3 times as long – which would have been quite hard to take). Rex Harrison plays Platonov, an intellectual, teacher and sharp tongued ex-soldier who seems to have women throwing themselves at him left and right. Harrison is excellent and great fun, but arguably a bit long in the tooth for Platonov – he was 63 when this was made. But he makes it work with his warm, perversely fatherly charm. The whole cast is strong, crucial to any Chekhov play working. Patsy Byrne is wonderful as Platonov's unsophisticated wife who manages not to see her husband for the cad he is, until it's too late. Sian Phillips is terrific as Anna, a sort of proto-feminist who desires Platonov, but only on her own terms. In the end, it's a comedy (with a touch of tragedy) about how hypocritical we can be when it comes to matters of our heart (and loins). You can clearly see Chekhov's influence on, for example, some of Woody Allen's comedies. The production is fairly rudimentary technically, not pretending to be more than a filmed play, but that doesn't stop it from being highly enjoyable.