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Hope and Glory

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

United Kingdom, United States · 1987
Rated PG-13 · 1h 53m
Director John Boorman
Starring Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Geraldine Muir, Sarah Miles, David Hayman
Genre Comedy, Drama, History, War

Set during World War II, the film tells the story of the Rowan family as seen through the eyes of their ten-year-old son, Billy. To him, the nightly bombings of the Blitz are as exciting as they are terrifying, and the war is a time of joy away from the burdens of school.

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80

Variety by

Essentially a collection of sweetly autobiographical anecdotes of English family life during World War II.

90

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

John Boorman's childhood and the London Blitz happened to coincide. Which is great for the movie Hope and Glory, because he turns both events into exquisite myth.

75

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

At the same time that Boorman seduces us with such enchantments, he also deceives us with a crafty little googly of his own--persuading us that he is embarking on a fresh adventure while aiming straight for the heart of old-fashioned English cinema.

90

The New Yorker by Pauline Kael

The movie is wonderfully free of bellyaching; it's a large-scale comic vision, with 90-foot barrage balloons as part of the party atmosphere.

100

Washington Post by Rita Kempley

Hope and Glory is so enjoyable you want it to be a 16-part mini-series. When it's over, you sit staring at the credits, as you would the last page of a good book, wishing for another chapter.

75

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

There is something almost perverse in the way Boorman defines his point of view. He is not concerned in this film about the tragedy of war, or the meaning of war, but only with the specific experience of war for a grade-school boy. Drawing from his autobiographical memories, he has not given the little boy in the movie any more insights than such a little boy should have.

60

Empire by William Thomas

Appealing, emotional and with a strong enough performance by Rice-Edwards as the boy in his own little war-free world.

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