Gabriel & Me

2001

Drama

2
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 11% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 4.9/10 10 194 194

Director

Udayan Prasad Photo
Udayan Prasad

Top cast

David Bradley Photo
David Bradley as Grandad
Iain Glen Photo
Iain Glen as Dad
Trevor Fox Photo
Trevor Fox as Mr. Ellison
Billy Connolly Photo
Billy Connolly as Gabriel
480p.DVD
739.34 MB
640*480
English 2.0
NR
us  
25 fps
1 hr 23 min
Seeds 5

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Theo Robertson 4 / 10

Billy Angel

I almost made a fool of myself when I was going to start this review by saying " This movie reminded me of BILLY ELLIOT " but then I looked up the resume of screenwriter Lee Hall only to find out that he was the guy who wrote BILLY ELLIOT so it's Mr Hall who's making a fool of himself not me Am I being a bit cruel on him ? No because Lee has something most other aspiring screenwriters from Britain don't have - He has his foot in the door , he has previously written a successful British movie that won awards and made money at the box office and what does he do next ? He gives the audience more of the same Young Jimmy Spud lives on some kitchen sink estate . He is bullied at school and no one loves him . The only thing keeping him going is that he has aspirations to be a ballet dancer . No actually he has aspirations to be an angel but considering his household he may as well be a ballet dancer . He has a macho waster of a father who thinks " Ballet dancers are a bunch of poofs while his granddad says " Ballet dancers are as tough as any man you could meet . I remember seeing the Bolshoi ballet ... " Yup Ballet is a main talking point on a run down British council estate those days - NOT . Come to think of it neither is left wing politics which seems to be the sole preserve of middle class do gooders who live in nice big houses , so right away everything about this set up feels ridiculously false Another major criticism is that this is a film that has no clue who it's trying to appeal to . I have often criticised Channel 4 for broadcasting movies at totally inappropriate times ( THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT at 6 am for example ) but they showed this at 2 am and for once they've got it spot on . Considering the story involves politics , ballet dancing ( Gawd I hate it ) lung cancer and poverty there's no way this can be deemed suitable for a family audience but since the main protagonist is an 11 year old child and features angels and ballet dancers ( Don't blame me if I seem obsessed with the subject - there was no need to refer to them ) there's not much here for an intelligent adult audience either . Of course if Lee Hall had been told at the script development stage by the producers that he should write a story featuring a schoolboy and an angel and had flatly refused saying that he wanted to write about other themes and stories then I will apologise but throughout the movie you do get the feeling that once the film was completed it was going to be marketed to the exact same audience who enjoyed BILLY ELLIOT
Reviewed by s-1

Geordie lad meets the Angel Gabriel

The writer of "Billy Elliot" should have quit whilst he was ahead."Gabriel and Me" is as flat as "Billy Elliot" sparkled. Jimmy Spud (the lead 11-year-old) lives in yet another north east dysfunctional family and, for reasons which remain obscure, decides he wants to train as an angel (the usual qualification - being dead - does not seem to apply in this plot). He applies to The Archangel Gabriel - in the human form of Billy Connelly - who obliges by appearing at unpredictable points to tell him how he is progressing. (Not well). Meanwhile Dad contracts lung cancer and Jimmy is disgusted when Gabriel refuses to cure him. This movie is implausible in the extreme - even if "Gabriel" is a figment of Jimmy's imagination. Apart from David Bradley's Grandad, the characters are two-dimensional, inconsistent and, worst of all, uninteresting. Any emotional content is crassly handled to the point of embarrassment - up to and including the death of Jimmy's father. On the plus side it is beautifully photographed; but can we PLEASE have a contemporary film, set in Newcastle, which DOESN'T make it look like a place which is slowly crumbling into non-existence?
Reviewed by davidxryan 5 / 10

upsetting for me

Writer Lee Hall's story will stick in my mind purely for forcing me to relive my father's death from cancer 18 years earlier. I was roughly the same age as the kid in the movie, and living in the North-East of England where the film is set, so I identified with him all the more. For me personally, then, the latter stages of the film were very upsetting indeed - but two year on, taking the film as a whole, I regard Gabriel and Me as mediocre and otherwise forgettable, all told.
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