Film review: The Time of Their Lives (12A)

Writer-director Roger Goldby's gently effervescent road movie reimagines Thelma & Louise 30 years later with dodgy hips and nagging regrets.
ROAD TRIP: Joan Collins and Pauline Collins hit the road. PICTURE: PA Photo/Organic Publicity.ROAD TRIP: Joan Collins and Pauline Collins hit the road. PICTURE: PA Photo/Organic Publicity.
ROAD TRIP: Joan Collins and Pauline Collins hit the road. PICTURE: PA Photo/Organic Publicity.

Modest in its dramatic ambitions The Time Of Their Lives is a bittersweet valentine to the transformative power of female friendship as seen through the eyes of elderly characters, who are usually relegated to supporting roles.

Goldby’s film is clearly targeting older audiences, who flocked to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. His portrait of sisterhood in twilight years isn’t quite in the same league but small can be beautiful and there a moments in Goldby’s script and the performances of leads Joan Collins and Pauline Collins that prove there is life after you start collecting a pension.

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Unassuming housewife Priscilla (Pauline Collins) meets glamorous former Hollywood star Helen (Joan Collins) in a supermarket and ends up going on a road trip to gate-crash the funeral of Helen’s ex-lover...

The Time Of Their Lives is a sweet and inoffensive tale which allows the two leads to play to crowd-pleasing type. Joan Collins turns back the clock to her Dynasty heyday, while Pauline Collins warmly embraces her role as a mother hen, who has been worn down by years of grief and has forgotten what it means to be cherished.

On general release.

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