Product Description

Studio: Platinum Disc Llc Release Date: 02/28/2006 Run time: 185 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17109 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-07
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 185 minutes

Customer Reviews

recommended to period-piece fans
Stunning scenery. Good music. A broad sweep of characters and relationships in this three-hour extravaganza. Viewers who like grand-scale period movies such as "The Buchaneers" or "North and South" should enjoy this movie, even though the period is the present and the upper-class is Scottish rather than English. The film is PG-class with no naughty words or bare skin or any of the other things that some people object to.

If this movie had not been based on a Rosamunde Pilcher book, it would probably be very popular. But it invites comparisons with "The Shell Seekers" and "Coming Home", and unfortunately it comes in second by comparison. But on its own, it is quite a respectable movie with much to offer.

The tension is kept up by two on-going mysteries: who is the dead body shown at the beginning? and what is Lottie going to do? When you set up exciting questions like these, you have to have some exciting answers to them. This film doesn't. Lottie doesn't do anything. And the dead body is a disappointment. There is another disappointment. We are made to dislike Edmund at the beginning and are longing to see him get clobbered. He doesn't.

Also, even at three hours, with the large number of characters, we don't get a chance to get into the few interesting characters enough. So, even though we come to know who the characters are, who their relationships are, and what their problems are, we don't really get a chance to feel those problems as we do in "The Shell Seekers".

There is also a serious casting mistake in the casting of Edmund. Edmund is a guy with whom the most beautiful and interesting women fall madly in love at first sight. The actor who plays him has to be a stone fox. Michael York, to put it mildly, isn't. This casting mistake makes the main story incredible and also contributes to making the ending less than satisfactory. The appealing characters are Pandora (Jacqueline Bisset) and the Mariel Hemingway character. Since they are appealing, we would like to see them do well. Alas.

Disappointing Soap Opera
If you enjoyed the book, I wouldn't recommend the DVD. Some fine actors, but the characters have none of the charm or depth that they have in the book. In fact, the portrayals are not at all true to the book. It appeared to be a cheesy made for TV miniseries: Part soap opera, part horror story.

A good melodrama with beautiful people and settings
SEPTEMBER gives us what we want from a Rosamunde Pilcher narrative: a story with enough mystery and intrigue to balance the obvious cliches, a beautiful place full of landed gentry in the English--or in this case, Scottish--countryside, beautiful people from varying walks of life, and the village idiot (in this case, a dotty woman) to help move things along.

While several of the major actors walk through their roles with no strain, little gems of acting appear in the lesser roles, like the dotty woman, and the little boy who plays the son.

Jacqueline Bisset as the "dazzling" Pandora is as gorgeous and as headstrong as the character requires and manages to capture the viewer's heart along with most of the people she meets.