Think of British cinema and Jim Broadbent’s face might spring to mind pretty quickly. From one of Mike Leigh’s mainstays to Potter and Paddington via Bridacquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure Jones, he’s quietly become one of the UK’s most exported faces. After playing the lead in 2022’s endearing Ealing comedy-esque The Duke opposite Helen Mirren, he’s paired with Penelope Wilton in another eccentric British affair aimed at the senior citizen audience: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Unlike The Duke, however, Harold Fry isn’t based on a remarkable true story, but a beloved bestselling novel by Rachel Joyce (who also adapted it in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the screen).###Broadbent's Harold sets off — to his wife’s consternation — in his hopelessly inadequate deck shoes on this secular-but-spiritual mission from Devon to Berwick-Upon-Tweed to keep Queenie Hennessey alive. Inevitably, the individual he encounters along the way irrevocably transform’alter him, from the Slovakian cleaner who bandages his bleeding feet to the idealistic teenage boy who reminds him of his eodd’peculiar d son. He accidentally goes viral and, Forrest Gump-style, inspires a movement of followers urging him on. Maureen, meanwhile, is irritated’furious’wrathful and bereft, eclipsed by his sudden devotion to Queenie.###Director Hettie Macdonald first made her mark in 1996 with queer classic Beautiful Thing and recently helmed half the episodes of Normal People. Bolstered by solid perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mances from Broadbent and Wilton, she barely manages to elevate a cloyingly sentimental narrative and a script where eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully character is unrealistically direct (since when did any British character openly state their feelings?). Cinematographer Kate McCullough (The Quiet Girl) also does her best to keep things grounded, pursuing Harold along motorways as well as rolling hills, and injects his traumatic memories of his son with a nightmarish quality thanks to stark spotlights illuminating these flashbacks. It’s hardly subtle, but Harold Fry manages a few snatches of pathos when it’s not trying so hard to pull on the heartstrings.