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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 11739
Released: January 25, 2000 |
| Our Price: $26.77 |
| Used Price: $31.96 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Colin Firth (BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (LIMBO), and Malcolm McDowell (MR. MAGOO) star in this delightfully charming comedy about the fun and awkwardness of growing up! Young Fraser Pettigrew has always been an adventurous child. But with the arrival of his sexy French aunt Heloise (Irene Jacob -- U.S. MARSHALS), Fraser enters a truly eye-opening summer of discovery as he learns some delicious truths about adulthood and the comic eccentricities of his loving family! Also featuring Rosemary Harris (HAMLET), the great ensemble cast lights up the screen. Come join the Pettigrews as their lives are forever changed in one unforgettable season!
Description of My Life So Far:
If pretty pictures and sweet intentions were enough to generate a classic family film, My Life So Far would rival How Green Was My Valley and George Cukor's Little Women. But those movies have strength and an acute sense of loss along with the sweetness and light, while--despite a death or two and the teasing prospect of adultery--My Life So Far doesn't really engage anything that would disrupt its rosy childhood memoir.
First-person narrator Fraser Pettigrew (Robert Norman) is age 10 in 1920, a moment when it seems that the charmed life of Kiloran, the rambling Scottish estate he shares with several generations of his relentlessly quaint family, will go on forever. Even a stray shellshock casualty from the Great War--a sub-Dickensian bogeyman who haunts the grounds--is treated as a picturesque bit of local color. The family is what counts: would-be inventor Colin Firth, eccentric paterfamilias and sphagnum moss farmer; his wife Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who traded an opera career for multiple maternity; crusty uncle Malcolm McDowell, who hopes to inherit Kiloran from matriarch Rosemary Harris and evict everybody; and Irène Jacob, the beauteous young Frenchwoman to whom the uncle is engaged and over whom everyone else goes gaga. Not to mention a gaggle of precocious siblings, colorful servants, and oddball interlopers.
This is all very slight, but amiable--sort of a Miramax dry run for The Cider House Rules without the darkness or the novelistic vision. The lakes, skies, and knobby hills around Argyll, Scotland, are unexceptionably gorgeous. --Richard T. Jameson
My Life So Far Reviews:
Times gone by 
2008-05-16 - My Life So Far is the memoir of an engaging 10 year old, charmingly acted by Robert Norman. His traditional Scottish family, portrayed just after The Great War, lives the cultured life of the British upper class, but times are changing. Fraser and his eccentric inventor father (Colin Firth) both fall for the lovely French fiance of an older, wealthier family scion, and the competition begins. Feeling belittled by his dad, Fraser vows to exact revenge by educating himself in the ways of the world by reading forbidden books. His strategy works, but there are several comical moments that develop because he does not quite understand what he is reading. The movie reaches a crisis when the family matriarch dies, and the denouement brings major changes. The actors are all well suited to their roles, the scenery is idyllic, and My Life is a charming, gentle story of times gone by.
My Life So Far 
2006-08-26 - I enjoyed the film very much. I found it amusing & delightful about an inquisitive, precocious youngster. A few of us found out about life this way. Some parents had a difficult time explaining our questions. Some may have done what gorgeous Colin Firth, the father did if they had the opportunity. I will definitely watch it again.
Entertaining story, lots of Firth!
2005-06-21 - Set in the 1920s, this film is enjoyable and charming while also touching on some of the darker aspects of growing up. Told through the eyes of a young boy, the actions of the adults seem even sillier and more laughter-provoking. However, this is no straight comedy. It touches on themes of marital discord, puberty (never fun) and ultimately, the "meaning of life."
The scenery is beautiful and Colin Firth is gorgeous in an atypical role as an inventor. His character is not all sweetness and light and that makes him more interesting. Firth fans, please take note of the fact that he appears in almost every bit of the film. It's fun to see him in the role of an eccentric dad (although you know you're getting older when you lust after the actor in the film that plays the father!)
Great acting, charming story and ultimately an uplifting film.
My Life So Far-- Has Been Boring... 
2005-02-21 - I orginally bought this film and I'm assuming you want to buy this film because it has Colin Firth in it... as a Colin Firth fan I found this movie boring and lacking what Colin usually gives us in his films.
In this one Colin is an inventor with a rather large family including a young rambunctious son who enjoys wandering around the estate causing havoic and looking at pictures of nude paintings. What seems to be the happy family is shattered when Colin's brother brings his have his age french fiance Heloise who he becomes infatuated with-- eventually one day in his factory room he tries to force himself upon her... eventually, his wife learns what has been going on and blows up at her mother's funeral. The movie ends with a reconciliation. The movie takes place through the view of Colin's young son-- focusing more on himself and the events he takes in around him.
All in all I found this movie rather dull and it's not the kind of movie Colin was made for... For really what woman wants to see Colin playing an adulterer? All in all buy Love Actually or Bridget Jones Diary watch Colin charm you in a movie you'll enjoy...
An underrated film
2004-08-01 - This movie will appeal to anyone who enjoys watching movies about large sprawling families, oddball characters, and little slice-of-life episodes. It's the 1920s and Fraser Pettigrew is 10 years old. He lives with a swarm of siblings, a devoted mother, a kindly grandmother, and an eccentric father who invents odd gadgets and invests in strange things (such as sphagnum moss). Things get even more mixed-up when Fraser's uncle arrives. Not only does the uncle treat Fraser's father with a kind of affectionate contempt, he has brought along a much younger fiancee - a sweet and musical Frenchwoman. Fraser, who is becoming curious about sex, and is only just seeing that his father is not infallible, is shocked when he notices that his father pays a great deal of attention to his uncle's fiancee. A rift in the family looks imminent, particularly when Fraser's mother discovers that her husband desires another woman.
In all, My Life So Far is a sweet coming of age story with some troubling episodes, as when Fraser's father childishly competes with him for attention from the Frenchwoman (who, unlike in other movies, is not a home-wrecking siren, but is actually a good woman who is faithful to her fiance). The movie treats the complexities of family life and childhood with humor and care. The visuals are also beautiful - the Scottish countryside does not disappoint - and there are other scenes that linger in the mind (a tender dance in the rain, for example). Really, this is a great movie for a quiet evening at home, snuggled under blankets.
