Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 67
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 32
The ensemble cast is strong, but they get overpowered by the muddled stew of melodrama.
Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 23
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 10
The ensemble cast is strong, but they get overpowered by the muddled stew of melodrama.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 18,986
Actor and author Richard E. Grant made his directorial debut with this period comedy drama inspired by his own experiences growing up in colonial Africa in the sixties. Ralph Compton (Zachary Fox) is the 11-year old son of Harry (Gabriel Byrne), the minister of education in the British-controlled African nation of Swaziland. While Harry is a likeable and well-connected man, his marriage to Lauren (Miranda Richardson) is on shaky ground, and when he learns she's been having an affair with one of
Jan 15, 2006 Wide
Nov 21, 2006
$0.2M
Samuel Goldwyn Films
All Critics (72) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (36) | Rotten (34) | DVD (5)
I admired the movie and was happy to see it but can think of two other films about whites in Africa that do a better job of seeing their roles.
Watching it is like trying to assemble a puzzle that's missing pieces: You can see the outline of a story, and some shapes fit neatly together, but there are undeniable holes.
Deftly balancing the end of British colonialism in Africa against a family's painful disintegration, Wah-Wah marks the impressive directing debut of Richard E. Grant.
What is understandably a subject of great fascination to [Grant] soon becomes a crashing bore to us.
The characters may be based on real people, but they fail to spring to life onscreen. As a result, their histrionics often are laughable, like the over-the-top shenanigans in a Douglas Sirk melodrama.
What the movie lacks in depth -- it's really little more than a glimpse of this boy and these people in this place at this time -- it makes up for in its well-observed details and sneaky humor.
After watching his directorial debut, Wah-Wah, I'd like [Richard] Grant to stay in front of the camera.
Grant has crafted a handsome period piece that never betrays his first-timer status.
While this is clearly a very personal film for Grant, and he seems to want to tackle some serious issues, his vision is too clouded by nostalgia to be truly compelling.
Grant is an impressively assured filmmaker, especially for a first-timer.
Only occasionally successful . . .
Wah-Wah is never less than good but it's also never quite great.
Full of too much blah, blah. And way too much of the shrill, shrieking, screaming, carrying-on variety.
The lush African setting sets this coming-of-age saga apart - it's too bad Grant didn't use it for more than picture-postcard backdrops.
Ralph's life, at least as it's presented here, isn't all that interesting, and Grant fails to elevate the ordinary into anything more than that.
I admire how Grant's writing and direction take Africa for granted (pardon the pun) in the sense that we are spared longing long shots of landscapes and similar signs of awestruck filmmaking. It's is the real thing, no wah-wah about it.
Rare is the honest labor of love that doesn't have some redeeming value, and Wah-Wah ultimately wins you over with its sincerity.
Sentimental and well meaning, the first writing/directing credit for Richard E.Grant (a favorite actor of mine) and auto-biographical as well. The damned Brits are losing their very last colonial holding as those that do the actual work of holding party like its the end of the world.
November 2, 2011Super Reviewer
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Miranda Richardson, Nicholas Hoult, Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Michael Richards, Julian Wadham, Fenella Woolgar, Ian Roberts Director: Richard E. Grant Summary: In his directing debut, Richard E. Grant dishes up a slice of his Swaziland boyhood. As the sun sets on Britain's
August 27, 2009
Super Reviewer
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