Saving Grace

Make a treacly comedy about a bunch of local oddballs in a wacky seaside outpost of the British Isles and chances are some American distributor is going to see it as the next Waking Ned Devine. Saving Grace even has the same feeble wordplay in its title. Played by a dithering Brenda Blethyn, Grace is the widow of a recently deceased ne'er-do-well who departed the world by stepping out of an airplane, leaving her with a nice cottage and a greenhouse and insurmountable debts. She'll have to fire her gardener, Matthew (Craig Ferguson), who's in his own financial bind -- he's trying to get together the means to marry his sweetheart. No stranger to the herb, Matthew suggests that Grace use her greenhouse and horticultural skills to grow enough killer weed to put them both in the money.

Director Nigel Cole is shameless in squeezing comic effect from absurdity -- as when two elderly women mistake marijuana for tea, or Grace takes on tough London drug dealers wearing a suit that looks to have been borrowed from the Queen Mother. Although the tale clings to some credibility and wit in the early going, by the time it spins out in its last third (oh, so now she's a bestselling author?), you have to wonder whether the filmmakers were dipping into Grace's stash themselves. At the Avon and Jane Pickens.
-- Peter Keough