Mr Hoppy, a shy, ageing American plant lover, lives in the flat above Mrs Silver, a rather ebullient retired midwife who buys a tortoise for company. Mr Hoppy falls in love with her but, crippled with shyness, develops a plan to win her heart by substituting ever-larger tortoises to satisfy her worries about the original's slow rate of growth.
This rather daft and whimsical story by Roald Dahl is adapted into a rather daft and whimsical TV film by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer. There isn't too much here by way of laughing out loud (Judi Dench has one short but hysterical piece of dialogue towards the end), but there is a lot of smiling and a fair amount of chuckling. And there are two delightful and touching performances from Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the tortoise-linked couple, both of whom deliver performances of far greater integrity and subtlety than the slightness of the material would suggest.
This rather daft and whimsical story by Roald Dahl is adapted into a rather daft and whimsical TV film by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer. There isn't too much here by way of laughing out loud (Judi Dench has one short but hysterical piece of dialogue towards the end), but there is a lot of smiling and a fair amount of chuckling. And there are two delightful and touching performances from Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the tortoise-linked couple, both of whom deliver performances of far greater integrity and subtlety than the slightness of the material would suggest.