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If you think this film is going to be a realistic portrayal of Victorian public school life, you are in for a disappointment.The costume is excellent, the actors are doing well, but the script is so flat and inconsequential, it is difficult to maintain any 'willing suspension of disbelief' or accompany the characters through their unlikely exchanges, flat moments, and the general lack of impetus for what should have been a riveting story. Instead, we have an enfeebled version of the terror Tom must have felt – enfeebled by the inconsequential, emotionless, pitter-patter dialogue in which Flashman struggles to make himself fear-inspiring and the Christian headmaster fails to catch our sympathy and support. Any such headmaster would have been laughed out of his job 40 years ago, let alone the class-bound oppressive conditions in Victorian England.I was looking forward to watching this movie and showing it to my students. But for anyone with a knowledge of the book, this film fails to catch an audience – schoolboys simply didn't talk like that because life was much meaner.
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