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Wondrous Oblivion (2006)
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Reviews Counted:40
Fresh:26
Rotten:14
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: This coming-of-age/cricket tale wants to be touching, but is too often sappy.
Theatrical Release:Nov 3, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and... Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and build a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960's England, and when the neighbours start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David's family are caught in the middle, and he has to choose between fitting in and standing up for the new friends who have turned his world upside down. [More]
Starring: Sam Smith, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Townsend, Emily Woof
Starring: Sam Smith, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Townsend, Emily Woof, Richard Ashton, Barry Davis
Director: Paul Morrison
Director: Paul Morrison
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Reviews for Wondrous Oblivion
David's favorite exclamation is "wondrous!" %u2014 which happens to be a fitting description for the talents of writer/director Paul Morrison.
Wondrous Oblivion is a timeless tale of an 11-year-old South London boy putting aside boyish things. Writer-director Paul Morrison affirms PG-rated life lessons that could appeal to 11-year-olds and their elders alike.
For all its bright-hued nostalgia (the cricket greens are practically incandescent), Wondrous Oblivion edges up to hard truths, most powerfully expressed in Lindo's towering performance.
A touching rite-of-passage flick which simultaneously sends several valuable messages about friendship, fidelity, tolerance, and reaching for the stars.
You don't have to know anything about the sport of cricket to be charmed by Wondrous Oblivion, a British film that is finally getting a well-deserved theatrical release after opening the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2004.
...Thanks to solid performances and very nice cinematography, it hits, if not a home run, at least a solid double (or the British equivalent).
A family film with a difference, Wondrous Oblivion displays real bite as it incisively tackles such adult subjects as racism, anti-Semitism, adultery and the plight of immigrants in an intolerant land.
It's a delight to see Delroy Lindo -- perpetually cast as tough cops and tougher crooks -- playing a tender father and decent (if struggling) husband.
Amid the mawkish mess rests a genuinely touching love story between two people who are considered outcasts by mainstream society. Too bad they're not the stars of the movie.
It's sweet-as-pie, nicely acted and boasts a marvelous vintage ska-reggae-calypso soundtrack featuring some of the best, bounciest songs of the era, including 'Sugar Dandy,' 'Rudi, A Message to You' and of course, Millie Small's 'My Boy Lollipop.'
The film feels like the Cliffs Notes version of what might have been a much longer and certainly more satisfying story.
Good intentions and some nicely playful moments go a long way toward balancing out Paul Morrison's uneven story of British immigrants in the early 1960s.
Form and content fight to the death in Wondrous Oblivion, Paul Morrison's defiantly gauzy tale of racial friction in 1960s England.
A small and intimate English film about playing cricket, coming of age, and the respect for diversity that seems so hard to learn.
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