A Modern Day Reflection of 'Harold and Maude'

With his orange-colored bowl haircut and freckled cheeks, actor Rupert Grint (known by millions of pre-teens as Harry Potter's cinematic sidekick) is perfectly cast as Ben, an awkward teenage boy whose reticence almost trespasses into total muteness. After a lifetime of being reined in by his overbearing, deeply religious mother (the always spot-on Laura Linney), Ben enters into the social world via his job as assistant to one spitfire of a diva, the washed-up actress Eve Walton (the inimitable Julie Walters of EDUCATING RITA fame). Walton, unable to accept the disintegration of her once-lauded career, chews up the scenery with her theatrics, culled from both plays of her past (think Shakespeare soliloquizing on cue) and creations of her imagination (she constantly invents stories to tell Ben, forgetting them only hours later). Yet it is exactly this overdramatic flair for life that awakens something in the actress's repressed assistant, and, for the first time, Ben begins to assert himself and his ideas...

Cast: Laura Linney, Jordan Young, Rose Keegan, Stanley Brock, Rupert Grint, Julie Walters, Jim Norton, Tamsin Egerton, Annabelle, Nicholas Farrell, Rita Davies, Oliver Milburn, Rupert Holliday Evans, Michelle Duncan, Faye Cohen, Ruby Mortlock, Don Wetherhead, Chandra Ruegg, Ricky Champ, Harriet Brock, James Brock, John Yule, Jacques Kerr, Iain McColl, Annabelle Apsion

Genre: Comedy

Release Date: October 13, 2006

MPAA Rating: PG-13

DVD Release Date: July 03, 2007

Runtime: 1hr 38min