Rent 23 Walks (2020)

A gentle, undemanding tale - 23 Walks review by TE

A quietly watchable tale of late-life romance, a cautiously stuttering relationship that develops from a dog walking encounter.

Alison Steadman is reliably good as Fern, whilst Dave Johns does a rather pallid version of his character in the excellent 'I Daniel Blake'. Dave does, however, have the much nicer dog out of the two canine protagonists.

Being of a similar age to the main characters, I found the storyline interesting enough to last the course, but the main problem is with the script. The script is plodding and at times unintentionally funny, especially when the relationship gets physical. Both actors (and both dogs) deserve better.

Much better than I was expecting - 23 Walks review by DC

One or two of the minor characters (the daughter, mainly) are poorly realised but the kids and the dogs and the two leads play their parts superbly. It is a sad story but with a bit of humour. Very credible and quite unpredictable. The music is nice, not intrusive, and the film is snappily edited. A self-indulgent director might have padded this out to two hours and ruined it.

Good drama - 23 Walks review by H|

Better than we expected. The start appeared to be cliched - but the drama really took off with David's revelation. A good telling of senior romance without the cosy feelgood factor. Excellent acting by Alison Steadman. and David Johns.

Boring - 23 Walks review by GI

A soppy, dull and cheesy romance about two lonely 60 somethings who meet while out walking their dogs and over the course of 23 dog walks form a relationship....of sorts! The problem with this is that the 23 walks structure is mostly pointless, indeed when it gets to about walk 4 you start to think about how many more you've got to sit through (they are counted with subtitle each time so you don't have keep count yourself). But the narrative deviates away from the actual walks to delve into the lives of the two protagonists, Dave (Dave Johns) and Fern (Alison Steadman) and pretty uninteresting they are too. The move into Ken Loach territory where Dave's council home rent arrears as an issue is all too vague and unnecessary and takes away from the romance which I'm guessing is the main purpose. The idea of a story about middle age romance is a good one but if this had been done with humour rather than full on angst, something more like Hampstead (2017), then it would have worked and been more enjoyable where even the slow pace would have been ok, as it is it drags on and on and by the time we get to the sex scene you just want it to stop.

Meh (said that a lot lately) - 23 Walks review by DH

Not offensive but not interesting either. Daves voice is incredibly dull so he slows the movie down. It is all a bit ploddy and we came up with lots of twists that didn't happen. We also came up with quite a dramatic ending but no, they just fizzle out the end of the movie.

I've come to the conclusion that films made in 2020 should be abandoned as they are all bad and show no imagination. The only one that did show imagination was Tenet and my head still hurts from that one. I've read explanations but I'm still none the wiser! There must be a halfway house between these twoddly movies and Tenet. Something with a decent story, well made! Anyone want to have a go? Please?

Steadman was lovely as usual but it just didn't go anywhere.