Is the fare for The Last Bus worth it? Spall’s performance ensures that the answer is a resounding yes! But, there is a caveat: viewers certainly shouldn’t expect a ride filled with joy and laughter.
The Last Bus
United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates · 2021
1h 28m
Director Gillies MacKinnon
Starring Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Natalie Mitson, Ben Ewing
Genre Drama
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Heart-warming tale of an old man (Timothy Spall), whose wife (Phyllis Logan) has just passed away. With his free local bus pass, he travels to the other end of the UK, to where they originally moved from, using only local buses. He heads out on a nostalgic trip whilst also carrying his wife's ashes in a small suitcase, and in doing so, he meets local people. By the end of the trip, he's a celebrity.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
As beautiful as some of the landscapes are, and as brilliant as Spall is in repose, there is only so much sitting on a bus looking wistful that one actor can do. Other than Spall’s steady gaze and some mood-book photography, The Last Bus has little to recommend it.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Try as I might, I couldn’t make friends with this weirdly unreal and sentimental Britmovie in the last-journey-with-someone’s-ashes genre. But it is certainly acted with commitment and integrity by Timothy Spall.
The Observer (UK) by Simran Hans
The journey is a nice excuse to paint Tom into a cheerily cosmopolitan portrait of the UK.
For a tender movie that follows an old man on a long and demanding multi-bus excursion to honor his late wife’s wishes, the placid affair has curiously little emotional range, and an even narrower sense of stakes
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