Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint review: a festive Britpic saved by casting

A Christmas Carol retold in a Yorkshire care home is the engine of Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint, and the Guardian's review says the film barely hides where it is going from the moment the residents pick their play. The review, published 4 November, judges the film a modest, sentimentally inclined British picture that opens like a "penny-pinching John Lewis ad" — and, thankfully, improves from there.

The titular Aubrey Flint is played by John Bradley. He is a Napoleonic history buff whose hostility to late December dates from seeing his French mother drop dead amid the Christmas decorations. Now he spends the holidays cavilling at carol singers and insisting that the icy pavements of his native York come with health-and-safety warnings.

What does the plot do with a Christmas sceptic?

The film, the review notes, is "very much not the kind of film to confirm a fellow in such beliefs." Instead, Aubrey is nudged towards a retirement community targeted by a developer, one planning a last theatre production. When the residents choose A Christmas Carol, the reviewer writes, "it all but closes the book on where this film is heading."

The premise is formulaic. The reviewer is clear about that. But the verdict is not a dismissal — the film earns a qualified pass on the strength of its ensemble.

Who is the real hero of the film?

"The real hero here is casting director Lucy Amos," the review states. She "gathers familiar faces who deserve a Christmas bonus for making the formulaic narrative seem far livelier than it is." The named cast includes:

• Richard E Grant, nearly unrecognisable beneath a frizzy wig-and-moustache combo as Mr Hopkins, a toy shop owner the review likens to "a modern Geppetto"
• Dave Johns as a former manager among the care home residents
• Kiell Smith-Bynoe, gardening under Karl Pilkington's "ever-irascible eye"
• Celia Imrie, Brian Bovell and Nigel Planer as other eminent residents

Planer's Ghost of Christmas Present earns a specific mention: the review calls it "a funny little coda" to the Nicholas Craig story, the comic character Planer originated.

The reviewer describes the overall effect as "atop a mince-pie frosting of sugar, we get a welcome sprinkling of comic stardust." The sugar is the sentiment; the stardust is the cast.

What does this change for the festive film season?

The review frames the film as the season's early opener — "the annual drive to expand the festive film canon begins unseasonably early" with this title. The implication for audiences is straightforward: this is a derivative film lifted by performance rather than invention, arriving ahead of the heavier Christmas releases. Viewers who want originality should temper expectations; viewers who want Richard E Grant under a Geppetto wig, Kiell Smith-Bynoe in a garden and Nigel Planer channelling Nicholas Craig's ghost will find exactly that.