garrettwhaynes This film has a great cast, and seems to have potential with the DVD tag line reading, "A Classic in the Making". Maybe the person who penned this tag line was trying to be generous but they couldn't bring themselves to call it "An Instant Classic" so they were clever and said "A Classic in the Making" which is ambiguous and not necessarily critical, but does seem to imply that this film has not quite arrived. I believe the director is to blame for this not being a better movie. He needed to bring more depth and emotion and realism out of the characters. The actors gave clichéd and strained performances and there was plenty material for this movie to play off. Set in Paris, secret lovers for decades, uncertain paternal origins, and tragic suicide. The impact was not there and although not a bad movie, it left much to be desired.

winopaul I note that people either love or hate this flick. Add me to the haters.My fundamental problem is that the whole premise is implausible. I mean, the deadbeat bum got offered 9 million Euros for the building. Close to ten million bucks. But I guess in true New Yorker fashion, he had to hold out for 12 million. A person of his character would be on a first-class jet back to the Big Apple and starting on his coke habit 20 seconds after signing the contract. But then we wouldn't have all the other implausible drama.Every major character was deplorable. Kevin Kline played a dead-beat bum and a whiny man-child. You can blame your grandparents (I'm Irish so I drink!) or you can blame your parents (Mommy didn't love me!) but here in real life we become adults and we can shape our own personality independent of genetics or upbringing. He is also a thief, stealing furniture to sell off for pocket change. His alcoholism and his relapse is almost to be expected. Of course he is an extortionist, shaking down the developer for cash at every opportunity.Deplorable #2 is Maggie. She's an adulteress that is not even sure of the paternity of her own daughter. She is also a venal gold-digger, that only stayed with her husband since he was rich. To top things off, rather than get a job and keep her apartment building in the family, she follows her bum muse, and sells it off in a kind of private reverse mortgage.Then there is deplorable #3, the daughter. She is another bum that needs to live with her mommy so she does not have to work too hard or find a husband. In addition, she is a mistress home-wrecker, just like mommy. Selfish to the core, she only worries about the affect of Keven's appearance on herself. What a peach.They are from a milieu of deplorables. Kevin's dad is an adulterer, obviously. This man so full of love he needs side action does not have enough love to play catch with his sullen spoiled little boy (or leave him an inheritance). Kevin's mom is a piece of work. A passive-aggressive narcissist that repeatedly tries to kill herself, and finally succeeds in blowing her brains out in front of her young son. Zappa comes to mind, "You better get it right the first time, 'cause there's nothing worse than a suicide chump." I guess with a wife like this there is no wonder the dad cheated on her. Maggie's husband has such low character he stays married to her despite knowing he is being cuckolded.The only decent people are the doctor, the real estate agent, the gal singing opera, and the shopkeeper that bought the stuff from Kevin. The developer might be hated by some people, but he is only trying to make Paris modern, and provide more housing. He was also a man of his word, letting Kevin extort him based on promises. They get a total of 3 minutes of screen time.The fact that the deplorables are considered normal by the scriptwriter is the best reason to never live in a big city like New York.OK, so how do we fix this mess? I can see a murder mystery. Make Maggie even more rotten. Make the daughter much nicer. Maggie is killed. The movie would implicate Kevin, who is, after all, a creep. Then he gets put in prison, and we find the daughter really is his sister, so she can file a claim and get the house, and who cares if it will be in court for a decade, she has a place to live. Agatha Christie with a level-1 Shyamalan.Or make it a thriller. Kevin kills Maggie, which does save a lot of budget, and we watch that real estate agent, now cast as a detective, solve the crime. Halfway through, Kevin learns the daughter is his sister, and he is trying to kill her too. Now we have the damsel in distress. Make the doctor the detective's sidekick, she is so sweet and hot, can't lose with that casting. Have the developer as a love interest for the daughter, so they can get married and she ends up the property anyway. Jules Maigret crossed with Columbo.

areatw I wasn't expecting much from this film but I was pleasantly surprised. 'My Old Lady' is a well-written, steady drama with a very simple storyline, but that's all that is needed.The relationship between the characters is what the film is all about and Maggie Smith and Kevin Kline were two perfect choices for the main characters. The humour is subtle but there's no doubt that this is a comedy-drama film and Maggie Smith is particularly funny.Sometimes less is more and 'My Old Lady' is certainly a testament to that. A very simple, slow film but just as effective as the more complicated, fast-paced dramas out there.

mark.waltz A beautiful house in Paris is the setting for this troublesome drama where the presence of a little old lady (Maggie Smith at her most passive/aggressive gentleness) turns the new owner's (Kevin Kline) world upside down. He inherited the house from his late father and discovers much to his confusion that as the owner, he must pay rent to Smith and her rather serious daughter, Kristin Scott Thomas, who has enough troubles of her own to add him to her list of problems. Smith, it is quickly revealed, was an acquaintance of her father's, and as the lines of communication open between the three, more facts are revealed that turn Kline back to the bottle, break up Scott's own relationship with a married man, and reveal secrets that are heartbreaking and often shocking.You can never go wrong with any movie that stars the now legendary Smith, the British Katharine Hepburn, whose tenacity to continue working has made her beloved. This isn't a Jean Brodie Maggie Smith, nor a Dora Charles Maggie Smith of "Murder By Death", and she is as far from her Lady Violet Crawley as she is from Little Lord Fauntleroy. A character of gentle breeding and much class, she teaches English to Europeans of other cultures living in Paris, and in one scene, must explain to one of her pupils of the very sexually explicit meaning of the book they are reading. There is no shock on her face, just minor amusement, and even when she confronts Kline with his return to the bottle, it is with much tenderness and concern. It turns out she knows more information as to why he drinks, and when Kline shares his most shocking secret with her, it is written on her face ever so briefly that her whole world is shattered because of it. The bond with Scott grows too, and they all learn that underneath their initial distrust of each other, they are now bonded forever.This takes much patience to get into, but the three stars do their best to help the viewer maintain intentions. It is a gentle movie, almost nurturing in a way, and leaves the viewer with a very important lesson of how the generations create gaps simply because they unwillingly refuse to understand the older or younger ones. As old Rose said in "Titanic", "A woman's heart carries many secrets", and in the case of Smith's Mathilde Girard, she has more than her alleged 90 years can hold. The three give brilliant performances, almost quiet to the point where it seems like they are not at all acting. It's one of those sleeper movies that you'll have to sleep on to really be affected by it and one where your own relationships with older relatives, especially parents, will be forced out of whatever hiding spot they hold in your soul.