User reviews

Hugh Bonneville is excellent as Dahl, even looks like him, and Keeley does a workmanlike job as Patricia Neal but there's little to enjoy about the film really. It's largely factual so a good way to learn more about Dahl's life. I've given it 7 as I can't really fault the acting but it's a pretty gloomy piece all in all.

It's an emotional story but jumps from scene to scene in parts which I found annoying. The young actress who played Tessa was excellent. Hugh Bonneville was fine as Dahl. Keeley Hawes, my absolutely favourite British actress, is a quintessential English rose and the American accent didn't suit her and wasn't very good. It's often the little things they get wrong that ruin an otherwise good film for me. The 2-year old boy appeared randomly, silent and unmoving and was barely mentioned.. When Roald threw a clod of earth at the window to attract Pat's attention, that clod moved about several times in the scenes that followed, sometimes disappearing altogether then returning in a different place. Don't they have continuity editors any more? Other than that, it was pleasant to watch with a decent storyline but I got a sense of a film that they'd rushed to get finished.

I was thoroughly enjoying this film and felt like it was getting to the midway point just to notice it only had 15 mins left to go!!!!

I honestly think they should have made a mini series about Roald Dahl and this been the first episode!

It Was a fantastic story but felt unfinished! The acting was superb and the casting was perfect, BUT It left me longing for more... there are so more stories left untold in regards to his life that I'd loved to have seen too!!

I highly recommend this if you don't expect to have a lot of his life covered only a year or so during a painful part of his career.

I didn't qrite connect with the story because there is a lot of negativity between the couple, and there's a lot of gibberish as well.

My Review- To Olivia My Rating 7/10

I've read various descriptions of this movie made in 2021 mostly describing it as depicting the tumultuous marriage between author Roald Dahl and Oscar winning Hollywood actress Patricia Neil.

Both roles impressively played by Hugh Bonneville as Roald Dahl and Keeley Hawes as Patricia Neal, who also gives an impressive performance . However I thought in this case Keeley Hawes a little too British to play the Kentucky born famous American actress with a very distinctive voice.

I disagree with the simplicity of labelling this emotional story just as a the story of a tumultuous marriage .

It was a marriage that lasted 30 years in which the couple survived the tragedy of a brain damaged son then the loss of their eldest daughter Olivia at the age of seven from encephalitis caused by measles .

Then later Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant in 1965 and was in a coma for 3 weeks.

Roald Dahl who was fascinated by medicine assisted in his wife's recovery by pushing Patricia Neal back to normalcy with six hours of mental and physical exercise every day.

The timeline that this movie portrays in their marriage takes place earlier in the 1960's at a tumultuous time in both their lives .

Roald Dahl's writing success was minimal compared to his famous wife Patricia Neal who is offered the movie role that she eventually won her best actress Oscar for cast as Alma Brown opposite Paul Newman in the 1963 hit movie Hud.

It explores the couples shared grief which eventually becomes a source of redemption and strength, ultimately leading Dahl to write the renowned classic "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Directed by John Hay who co wrote the script with David Logan To Olivia is based on a novel by film historian Stephen Michael Shearer titled An Unquiet Life.

I enjoyed this movie as I think anyone interested in film history but I wonder if the novel is better than the movie.

So To Olivia hit Sky today and I had some time so I decided to watch it and here is my review for the film. The premise of the film documents the story of Roald Dahl and his marriage to actress Patricia Neal and how they hit the rocks after a personal tragedy.

Main Character Hugh Bonneville plays Dahl here and I thought he did a good job in the role, in fact I would argue for a film like this he was the perfect choice for the role as this film is really up his street. Dahl is obviously an iconic character and this film does portray him as a very complex one, who goes through plenty of struggles in the film and I'm guessing his life and I think Bonneville captures that as well as he can here.

Supporting Characters Keely Hawes plays Neal and again I think she is good in her role, the two of them just have good chemistry together and manage to rise above a bit of a weak script to provide good moments and good characters. Hawes provides a strong performance and does a good job in standing side by side with Bonneville and sharing some really good scenes. There are some good smaller roles by Conleth Hill & Sam Heughan that add quality to the cast, I also thought all of the child actors gave good performances here too.

Story I was expecting a bit of a nice film that doesn't have a good story but I was surprised with what I got. This film has some really dark moments in it and sees the two main characters go through real turmoil and adds depth to this whole idea. But this film lacks structure, it feels like a bunch of ideas chucked together and hope that they stick. Also despite thinking Bonneville did a good job I thought they made Dahl a pretty unlikeable character and it was actually pretty difficult to root for him and support him.

Script This for me is the biggest weakness of the film, the script is just poor and not written very well. If it wasn't for the quality of the performers this film would have been a lot worse, it just lacks structure in its storytelling and making the film compelling. You are interested because of Roald Dahl, if it was a completely new story the film would have been much weaker.

Style The film is clearly pretty cheap, but that doesn't really hurt it too much and it does a fine job in keeping you interested enough and did what it needed. It is funny though, the film is only 90 mins but I found it a bit slow and either it needed to be a bit longer or just film it to be a bit faster in pace.

Overall Overall, this is an above average film that is just fine. It doesn't do anything to really stand out but it is an okay film that if you like the description might be worth the 90 mins but I think the majority can give it a skip.

Rating - 6/10.

I don't want to say to much about what happens, I suppose the trailer does say. This is a film about a famous couple in the 60's dealing with their grief when losing a child. The pain, the loss the love. A loving family trying to pick up the pieces, to regain their strength and stay a family for the rest of their children. This is a moving and sad movie but really good about a very famous couple. Very well acted by all the cast.

This is a sad movie about a serious, heavy and complex emotional matters. What a great cast. Had such promise and I was so excited to see it, but it really left me disappointed, start to end. The script is weak, incredibly shallow, especially for such heavy matter. Then there is the weaving of the story --- there is none, no cohesiveness. Feels like bunch of scenes rather than a continuous story. I also didn't care for the made up American accents, was too distracting and just added to the shallowness overall. Leaves you sad, which should have been for the subject of the film - grief of losing a child, but instead you are left sad for the way the film was a complete mess, and a waste of the 90 minutes you spend on it.

I have been waiting over a year for this one. Having grown up in the 80's Roald Dahl childhood stories were a staple, then as an adult I'm still attached to the film versions. The film gave me precisely what I wanted. A gorgeous story about Roald Dahl and his family through a difficult time, during the writing of one of my favourite of his books. Hugh Bonneville was perfect as Dahl, and the relationship between him and his wife was full of warmth, love, and humour, which really drew me in from the start. There were plenty of hints towards origins of his many books, but not overdone which would have made it feel forced. There were no long drawn out sections, which I often feel there are in these sort of films, and I thought the pace was perfect for the subject matter. I will definitely be watching it again. I'm only disappointed that it hasn't got the big cinema release it deserves!

In roles previously played by Dirk Bogarde and Glenda Jackson, Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes are now the writer Roald Dahl and his actress wife Patricia Neal. Both Bonneville and Hawes are very fine actors in their own right, if perhaps more famous on television than in the cinema and anyone who, in recent years, has seen "Bodyguard", "Line of Duty" or "It's a Sin" will know just what a chameleon Hawes can be and you think that even an Oscar-winning American actress might not be a stretch and that Dahl would be a walk in the park for Bonneville.

As befits a film about the author of children's books, John Hay;s film "To Olivia" is as much about the children in the Dahl/Neal marriage as it is about the adults but despite decent work all round this never rises above a conventional Sunday night BBC or ITV drama, (and good as Hawes is, she's certainly not Neal). Quite frankly, this could be a movie about any middle-class couple living in any English village and finding they don't get along and you certainly won't learn anything about either of its central celebrities. Both Neal and Dahl had their fair share of tragedy, treated here as soap opera. As Geoffrey Fisher, one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, the wonderful Geoffrey Palmer has no trouble stealing the film but ultimately this is a film that is not worth stealing or indeed seeing.

I really enjoyed this movie, despite the sad story. I thought the performances by Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes were outstanding as was the young girl who played Tessa. Sam Heughan as Paul Newman had a small part but wow, he certainly embodied Mr. Newman perfectly. I wanted more scenes between Keeley and Heughan. A very enjoyable movie.

Acting below the standards..... It is OK, but the script is lacking of information and feelings, babies are all over the movie with strong characters but with not much explanation why and what they were.

Big drama without sense when you loose a child and you treat all the alives ones like they are dead too, all the rest of the movie is a mocking of what it could be really was such experience and what really happened.

Probably not one for anyone born out of the British Isles this wonderful so call true tale of the then struggling Roald Dahl wonderfully portrayed by Hugh Bonneville yet outshone by the still glamorous Keeley Hawes as the Anglo American Actress Patricia Neal.

Without being too sickly in love or without being to turbulent it shows a strained marriage that is rocked with tragedy, one i am just learning about by watching the film.

The two young girls who played Olivia and Tessa ( now known as Sophie Dahl ) where really great.

As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s Charlie, Danny, The Twits, Mrs Pepperpot , James etc were just a joy and i was always much more a Dahl reader than a Enid Blyton and her bloody Racist and not very PC Noddy books ,or the sickly famous five which i I only liked the border collie.

Back on topic, good acting, above average script. Not bad all round to say it was a SKY TV Exclusive. Cant understand reviews under 7 but i suppose some people dont understand just how important as a Briton and legend Roald Dahl is.

One for a rainy afternoon in lockdown times

It was probably best that this didn't make it to the big screen due to the pandemic, it works better on the small

This is interesting enough stuff, with good performances, but it is a bit slow, and seems unclear as to what its main focus actually is.

One of the first , if not the first book I ever read was Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. A brilliant book that I still hold dear to my heart . Ronald Dahl had a fantastic talent that not many authors had but there is so much about the man that I never knew . Until now

In 1962, Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl retreat to the English countryside to bring up their young family. The seemingly unlikely pair find their relationship put to the test by a tragic loss.

Firstly I had no idea that he was married to Patricia Neal . The sultry older woman to Paul Newman's Hud . A brilliant film that I only watched for the first time this year .

Secondly i didn't know about the tragedy in his life and how it affected him and his family so badly.

Although this does delve into the writing of Charlie and the Chocolate factory and the Patricia's Oscar winning performance in Hud , this is more about family and their grief .

It's about dealing with bereavement of a daughter and and how they got through the worst thing that can happen to a family .

Hugh Bonneville is great as Dahl as is Keeley Hawes as Patricia Neal.

The prosthetics on Bonneville take a little getting used to but you can see why they did it because the last thing you want is Roald Dahl to be a Robert Crawley from Downtown Abbey.

I really liked this and I can't quite get my head around the low ratings it has got . Perhaps I was more invested in the story that most people ?

To Olivia (2021)-

Firstly, this film really doesn't show Roald Dahl in a particularly good light and that in itself is a shame as he is such a revered figure, certainly in Britain. I'm sure that on occasions he must have been a bit of a bu??er, but this portrayal and particularly Hugh Bonneville, make him seem very dark indeed and there isn't enough lighthearted fun and banter to balance it with.

It seems, in fact too small a snippet of his life to bother making a film about and perhaps should be part of a larger series that explores his life as a whole instead.

I found this same problem with 'Stan & Ollie' (2018) 'Judy' (2019) and 'Roald & Beatrix' (2020) too.

I want to see a film or TV series that shows us all that we want to know of these people and not just the last dregs of their lives or tiny moments that don't really mean anything.

They are heroes to some after all and villains to others, but let us see it properly done and judge for ourselves. Don't put in things that didn't happen just to flesh it out or sway opinion, but stick to the facts. Surely that isn't too much to ask in this glorious age of film making?

If Black Lives Matter and the removal of certain statues has taught us anything it's that the public need to know who the celebrated really were. Churchill certainly didn't sit with with any black couple on the subway and he definitely didn't talk to them, because he was known to be racist, it's not for me to say whether that takes away from his other achievements and the lives he seems to have saved in World War II, but it just didn't need to be misrepresented and faked in the film 'Darkest Hour' (2017).

Similarly this film seems to show a very biased view of Roald, based on the book centring on his ex wife, Patricia Neal. It may be the most factually accurate film I've ever seen, but it's hard to believe based on what we know of the man from elsewhere.

It's interesting that the book the film is based on is essentially about her, but the film is far more focused on him. Did the director and producers have a grudge against him?

Hugh plays a very good Jim Broadbent, but I didn't buy him in the lead role at all, especially as it is so unfavourable.

Although he is gorgeous, Sam Heughan was very wrongly cast as Paul Newman, regardless of how good he looked in those trousers.

Keeley Hawes however was brilliant and a talent to look out for in the future. I think she will prove to be a regular presence in films throughout the world and do great justice to each part that she plays.

I believe that this story needed to be a small part of something much bigger. A film based on Roald and Patricia's years together or a TV series that covers his whole life, which must surely have been interesting. Perhaps with a lot more light to balance the shade.

The subject matter here is very miserable and even in the way that it's filmed, it's very dark. Not an enjoyable watch if you're feeling blue for sure, but even the sadness and grief seems to get lost in the mostly anger and resentment shown.

It's hard to score it high.

127.42/1000.

Film reviewers seem to be generally not a very bright group pf people, and the negative reviews this film has gotten are absurd. IGNORE THE REVIEWS. This is an excellent film, based on the true story of the writer Roald Dahl and his wife, the Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal. Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes play the lead roles brilliantly and capture the tragedy they endured when they lost their young daughter Olivia to measles, before the vaccination for this dangerous disease became available in England, where they lived. (Note to any idiotic Anit-Vaxxers reading this - GET YOUR KIDS VACCINATED NOW!) This is a beautiful, very inspirational story.

That tells the more hidden /oblivious parts of writer roald dahls life as a familyman father and husband, acted superbly hugh bonneville. in his first marriage he had 5 children, among them the name of the ntitle olivia. olivia died due to encephalities after a short period sickness of measles, a common outcome of one of the socalled'' child diseases''.

its a heartbreaking biographicall we all witness, on different reactions and crisis management,where the traditional ways of mourning in the british society where mens and womens reactions in those days where kutymised and feelings especially for mails were rather rough and icecold, and weakness of crying unheard of. even the verbal use of the name olivia meant hardships for years to the author. its also the story about tessa, that was olivias sister and playmate at near same age, and how her sisters death became a story of guilt and anxiousness, especially towards her father.

productionwise, its perfectly precise on the era of time, its a filmatographic masterpiece, the score subtle and grevious, and the set designs and used localities are upfront work. the cast delivers beyond expectations, and they have managed to display the grell and sad emotions as well as the weather in that part of the world

its a film that many who've lost a young child will find reckognizabel, and may awaken strong emotions, to all those do not watch this film alone, do see this as a group therapy as a tool to commemorate what you had and still have left in the memories. i cant guarantee a cry-free evening after watching this, therefore a recommend from the grumpy old man

It started off with James Horner and I shut if off and watched Braveheart again instead. The next day I gave it a chance and I regret not watching Braveheart for a second night. Snooze fest.

I wasn't one of the kids that read that many children books, so naturally I didn't know if the main character or his story were real. As an outsider from this universe, i couldn't help but glue my eyes and deem them captive to a magnificent performance, swiftly and gently sailing down the stream of a heartwarming story, that had me more and more interested in Mr. Dahl, and, mind my adult age of twenty-two, read the books he birthed.

Absolutely brilliant and a true treasure to the memory of the Dahl family.. Brilliant acting and an absolute must for any Roald Dahl fan.

This film would have been much more successful if it had been released in the 1960s, when Patricia Neal was still a recognizable name. But now? I would bet money that over 9 out of 10 film goers don't have a clue to who she is. Her tragic car accident made headlines in the 1950s, and she attempted a comeback in the 1960s that, at best, was minimally successful. Her marriage was practically unknown in the 50s and 60s, unlike the marriages of Marilyn Monroe, which were splattered all over the papers. Of course, Neal was a legitimate actress, so she did not depend on cheap publicity to make her films successful. However, there is nothing wrong economically with the cheap publicity angle. Now? Nobody Cares.