"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

From the biggest streaming service in the world, comes a movie based on a book that was on my mother’s shelf. Lily James returns behind the typewriter, this time as accomplished author, Juliet Ashton. Following the release of her latest book, a letter showed up requesting Charles Lamb’s Shakespeare for Children. The sender was a member of a small book club, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. He found a book, also written by Lamb, with her name and address scribbled inside. Intrigued, she responds and makes a trip to Guernsey. She is greeted by Dawsey, the man who contacted her. Their group was formed during the German occupation of their island following a forbidden party. After the ban of raising farm animals, by the Nazis, Amelia, a Cousin Isabelle-like old lady, hid a pig in her barn and invited a few of her closest friends, Elizabeth, whom she considers her daughter, Isola, a medicine woman, and Eben, the local postmaster, to feast on the forbidden creature. On the way home, they are caught breaking curfew. To avoid arrest, they found the book club where they also serve a pie consisting of mashed potatoes and strips of potato peels.
Five years later, they are still going strong, except Elizabeth has been off the island for years, leaving her four-year-old daughter, Kit, behind. Juliet turns into Jessica Fletcher and becomes dedicated, against the Society’s wishes, to search for Elizabeth and bring her home. With the help of her American fiancée, Mark, she searches through records, newspapers, and letters to discover that the Society is not as graceful as they seemed. Dawsey had become friends with a Nazi soldier who falls for Elizabeth. Amelia didn’t approve and ordered her to break up with him, especially after she found out Elizabeth was pregnant. To her luck, the Nazi soldier was discovered and was sent to the continent, but the ship got torpedoed. Elizabeth was later arrested for assisting a boy and was taken to a concentration camp, where she was shot for protecting a fellow prisoner.

Juliet returns to London but is unable to return to her old life. She breaks off her engagement with her overbearing and selfish boyfriend, begins writing the script, which Netflix now owns, and sends it to the Society. Dawsey bolts for the docks just as Juliet was departing to get back together with her and take in Kit as their own.

The film felt more like a PBS special than a Netflix movie, especially since half the cast of Downton Abbey stars in this movie. The plot kind of felt overused where a newcomer finds some dirt on the townspeople to use in a story but decides not to publish it, and the plot of finding your roots in the said little town. There is also the "character writes the book they are currently in" cliché, seen in The Great Gatsby (2013), Ring of Bright Water, James and the Giant Peach, and a bunch of other movies and books I can't think of right now.

The movie had some potential. A major setback is how unevenly paced it was with flashbacks, and how littered it was with the flashbacks. I understand that sometimes was necessary to show you what happened rather than tell you, but there is a time and a place for that. There were several times that didn’t fall under this category.

And why do all war movies now have the bleak “There’s got to be a better way” filter on them? It was a dark time, I know. That doesn’t mean you have to make me depressed about it.

Jessica Findlay Brown had only maybe five minutes of total screen time in this movie as the defiant Elizabeth. I guess that is because she is laying low in American films and television because many Downton Abbey fans still haven’t forgiven her for leaving Tom Branson and little Sybbie alone.

Netflix isn’t alone in this, but I’m starting to sense a trend in adapting material many of us only heard in passing, and this isn’t the first time Netflix has done this. The now popular series, 13 Reasons Why, came out of a book series that I only saw in the book orders when I was in school.

I will say that it was a decent movie that I’d be willing to watch again.

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Released On: August 10, 2018
Rating: TV-14
Stars: Lily Collins, Jessica Findlay Brown, Tom Courtenay
Director: Mike Newell
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81% Certified Fresh
IMDb Score: 7.4/10