review for Cold Comfort Farm on AllMovie

Cold Comfort Farm is a welcome late-career success from the inconsistent John Schlesinger, who got off to a smashing start in the '60s with Billy Liar, Darling, Far From the Madding Crowd, and Midnight Cowboy, only to stumble through the next several decades with less memorable work. Stella Gibbons' novel is replete with colorful characters and wacky situations, but it would be too easy to give over the show to the country cousins. Fortunately, Schlesinger and his collaborators found their Flora in Kate Beckinsale, a brilliant actress whose only previous film role of note was that of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. Beckinsale makes Flora a fascinating combination of naïveté and bossiness. She is oblivious to the darker natures of her country relatives and their neighbors, but she is also completely determined to improve their lives. (Perhaps the contradictions actually feed off one another.) While Flora bustles about, straightening, dusting, and re-arranging, her subjects act bewildered, amused, put-upon, and relieved that someone besides the selfish Ada Doom is in charge. Of all the scenery chewers in this cast of first-rate performers, no one masticates as loudly and as amusingly as Ian McKellen as the Reverend Amos Starkadder. The film is a delight from start to predictable finish. Fans of the French hit Amelie may find that their heroine from that film has a charming predecessor in Flora Poste.