Product Description

Critically acclaimed as Dickens' crowning achievement this sweeping tale of two turbulent love affairs plays out amidst a tangled web of wealth corruption passion and betrayal in 1860s London.Running Time: 354 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 794051233820

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6245 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2005-09-06
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 351 minutes

Amazon.com
One of Charles Dickens' darkest yet also most romantic novels gets a lavish treatment in this BBC mini-series of Our Mutual Friend. The heir to a great fortune made from the garbage business is drowned--and his death affects everyone. His father's manager, Noddy Boffin (Peter Vaughan, Brazil), gets the money, to the alarm of snooty society. The man who pulled the heir's body out of the Thames is accused of his murder; his daughter, Lizzie Hexam (Keeley Hawes, Tipping the Velvet), finds herself pursued by both an idle gentleman (Paul McGann, Withnail & I) and an obsessed, violent schoolteacher (David Morrissey, Basic Instinct 2). The heir's intended bride, Bella Wilfer (Anna Friel, Me Without You, gets socially adopted by the Boffins, where she succumbs to the lure of money above all and spurns the interest of a mysterious stranger (Steven Mackintosh, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels). The plot creeps up and down London society like a tenacious plant, twining around a pair of golddiggers who mistakenly married each other and a heartsick bone merchant named Mr. Venus (Timothy Spall, Secrets & Lies). This excellent adaptation moves with aggressive speed, drawing the viewer into the grimy worlds of the riverside and the dust heaps and the glittering, gossiping parties of the rich. Our Mutual Friend balances one of Dickens' most entrancing love stories with his creepiest gothic turns--it's a rich stew of characters both earnest and vile, made with sumptuous production values and movie-quality cinematography. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Well Executed Performances
I purchased these items on DVD to replace items taped of PBS years previously. They were excellent then and are equally interesting now.

Awesome
If you want to save yourself about 20 hours or so of reading, I highly recommend the movie. You do lose the story lines of a few characters such as Fledgby, Riah, the Veneerings, and the Podsnaps. And the Lammles, and Twemlow stories are greatly reduced but the flavor of the story is done very, very well in the movie.

In addition, there is a great amount of believable passion in the four main characters of two of the story lines. The actors made their characters tangible and relatable.

I think it is rare to see a movie follow the book so closely and come out great.

And might I add, may we all be like the Boffins.

wonderful
Loved this movie! I started watching the BBC American movies and this one is one of my favorite ones.The journey it takes you into the characters is great. So many wonderful people and there love stories.Loved it