Cold Comfort Farm [DVD]

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This witty satire is based on Stella Gibbons’s 1932 comic novel. It’s clever, charming, hilarious, and delightfully twisted in that inimitable British way. A large extended family of eccentric (not to say depraved) characters is brilliantly cast, featuring, among others, Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Fry, and Joanna Lumley. It milks every drop of humor out of its simple premise: a young woman, recently orphaned, goes to live with her relatives in the country and attempts to create order out of generations of chaos. The movie is remarkably faithful to the novel of the same name, which is hilarious too.