Writer Ayub Karan Din scored quite a hit with his script for East Is East a few years ago, and now he’s back with All In Good Time, based on his Olivier award-winning play, Rafta Rafta. It’s another trip into the world of British Indian families and the generation gap between parents born half a world away and children who’ve only ever known life in the UK.
Young Atul (Reece Ritchie) and Vina (Amara Karan) have just gotten married, but their plans for a honeymoon in Goa are ruined when the travel firm they booked it through goes bust. Instead they stay at home with Atul’s parents, Eeshwar (Harish Patel) and Lopa (Meera Syal). Having saved themselves for marriage, Atul and Vina can now finally have sex except they can’t, as for various reasons it doesn’t happen for them.
Atul also finds his relationship with his father becoming more difficult to handle. While Eeshwar is not a bad man, he constantly tries to outdo his son, always thinks he knows better than his child and never listens to him. As the weeks pass and there’s still no sex, tensions begin to grow between Atul and Vina, but the key to marital harmony may actually be father and son coming to a new understanding. Oh, and there’s also a bit of a family secret floating around in there too.
All In Good Time is a bit of a mixed bag. It has wit, some wonderful performances (particularly from Harish Patel and Meera Syal) and scenes that pack an emotional wallop. However it’s difficult to escape the feeling that things don’t tie together completely and the film lack clarity over the motivations and reactions of the characters. Individually Atul and Vina’s inability to consummate their marriage, as well as the father and son problems, make for decent plots, but they don’t come together fully satisfactorily. That’s partly due to the fact a revelation about Atul is left a bit too late.
There’s also a slight feeling that the script has never quite escaped its stage origins, but unusually, it might have actually been better if it had stayed closer to the contained world of the theatre, rather than opening things up to the rest of Bolton. The film is at its strongest during scenes between two or three people in family home, when the characters are given a chance to breathe and reveal themselves. Much of the rest seems slightly extraneous and unnecessary.
It’s far from a bad film, but unfortunately not the fully satisfying heartwarming charmer East Is East was.
Overall Verdict: There’s wit and charm, but in opening things up from its stage origins, clarity and tightness has slightly been lost. It’s still a good movie, but not all it could have been.
Special Features:
Interviews with cast and crew
Red Carpet featurette
Trailer
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
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