The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Mike Newell and since it was starring Lily James, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, with this title, I was expecting a rather cheesy vintage picture about some stuffy book club but I have to admit that the damned thing turned out to be not bad at all after all. Indeed, I actually didn’t know that the Guernsey Island had been occupied by the Nazis while the rest of the UK was free so it was really interesting to learn about this rather obscure page of history. I thought it was also quite brilliant that this group of people would start a book club as a social event providing a way to escape the daily horrors of the occupation and to simply meet some kindred spirits. Finally, the lovely Lily James delivered another solid performance and she had some nice chemistry with Michiel Huisman. Eventually, if they would have simply focused on these elements, the damned thing could have been actually really good but, unfortunately, they kept adding some stuff to give the whole thing some extra dramatic edge. Indeed, not only the love triangle involving Lily James, Michiel Huisman and Glen Powell was terribly generic, tedious and above all completely unnecessary, there was just too much drama going on with Elizabeth McKenna, the character played by Jessica Brown Findlay. I mean, it did make sense that a member of the book club would have been deported by the Germans at some point but everything else around this character was just too much. The day before, I actually saw ‘Umimachi Diary’ which I really loved but it was in fact criticized by some critics for its complete lack of dramatic edge. However, this movie was the completely opposite as it was a perfect example of a fine story which was compromised by too many superfluous dramatic turns. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was in fact much better than I expected and it is actually worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

Rated 6.6/10