Cold Comfort Farm is a jolly film that bounces along as merrily as its theme tune. It's a rollicking good comedy with a laugh-out-loud collection of Dickensian characters (the doom-stricken Starkadders, the rustic Adam Lambsbreath, and the upper crust Hawk-Monitors). Certainly the film is very over-the-top and silly, but it's light-hearted fun - a welcome alternative to the glut of psychological, heart-wrenching, blood-and-guts fare on the market. <br /><br />The Starkadders live on the bleak acres of Cold Comfort Farm, where "the cows are barren and the sows are farren". Into this gloomy and eccentric setting comes young, 1930s-modern Flora Poste, who sets to winning the hearts and minds of Cold Comfort's inhabitants, and dragging the Starkadders into the twentieth century. Along the way she manages to rearrange and enliven her own life too. <br /><br />Kate Beckinsale (prior to her arrival on the scene of big-budget American flicks) is a likeable and chirpy young lady with a talent for organisation. In the supporting roles, Joanna Lumley is delightfully sarcastic as Flora's incongruously named aunt, Mary Smiling, who has a rather unusual hobby. And Ian McKellen is a real scene-stealer as the fire-and-brimstone preacher of the Church of the Quivering Brethren. <br /><br />The plot revolves around Great Aunt Ada Doom and the 'narsty' thing she saw in the woodshed nigh on 70 years ago. There is also the mysterious wrong perpetrated on Flora's father by the Starkadders sometime in the dim and misty past. So it is a tad frustrating that the audience is never let in on either of these secrets! But these are minor quibbles in what is otherwise an excellent comedic romp, with some interesting and atmospheric cinematography. A very good (and very British) laugh.