From the reviews here, it seems like the movie doesn't capture the book's feel. I've never read a book by Mary Webb so I literally have no idea if this parody is really successful or not. It parodies the accounts of rural-life portrayed in books by Mary Webb. But, and perhaps this is just me, it's a movie that would probably be much better if you knew what it's supposed to parody. Gibbons gleefully guides her audience from expectations of a farm filled with animalistic people guided solely by reproductive impulse to an understanding of rural people as fully and genuinely human, worthy of respect and affection.This is quite a good film that benefits from a talented cast of actors playing wonderfully eccentric characters.
What is easy to miss, however, is the sheer satisfaction the last chapters provide when the reader is open to the role of Robert Poste's child as an alternative lense through which to view the world of Cold Comfort Farm. The heavy-handed symbolism, overt allusions, caricatured character presentations, and excessively overt foreshadowing lead up to an ending that has been described, somewhat accurately, as saccharine. However, Gibbons provides the readers more, but certainly not less, than brilliant one-liners and hilarious descriptions of people and places in service of a satire. Her acerbic wit sets the stage for an outright lampooning.
Gibbons's choice to set her novel in the oversexed and animalistic realm of rural Britain between the wars is on the surface an effort to lampoon and satirize novels that offered the reader little more than base entertainment.
Entering into the universe of rural fiction so prevalent and popular during her time, Gibbons borrows and exaggerates many of the prevailing motifs made popular by writers long since forgotten. While Cold Comfort Farm is definitely a place like no other, it is actually a place like many others. Contrary to what it might seem like, Stella Gibbons does not create a world.
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