Netflix Review | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

There comes a rare time when a Netflix original movie pops up that is actually watchable. With the global streaming giant churning out original films at least once a week, with quantity trumping quality, coming across a good movie is nothing short of a miracle.

One such watchable Netflix film has a mouthful of a title that is impossible to forget: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And this obscurely titled movie is a historical romance helmed by the competent British director, Mike Newell, who is best known for the cult hit Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Lily James So get ready to curl up with your smartphone, or cozy up with your laptop, because this Netflix 1940s romance will engage you in a light mystery and a soap-ish love triangle.

Based on the best-selling epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows, the film follows the life-changing excursion of post-WWII writer from London, Juliet Ashton, played by the always beaming Lily James (Cinderella, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Downton Abbey), to the island of Guernsey. There, in the bucolic island, Juliet meets more of her Downton Abbey co-stars—a group of islanders with a deliciously secret life during the second World War.

What leads Juliet to Guernsey Island is a series of enthralling letters from a certain Dawsey Adams, one of the island’s residents who happened to come across Juliet’s name and address inscribed inside her lost copy of the book Essays of Ella, by Charles Lamb. Dawsey tells Juliet that he is part of a book club called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

The two eventually become pen pals, with Juliet being swept away by Dawsey’s literary passion and thrilled by the idea of an oddly named book club that spawned during the German occupation.

Juliet’s wish to glean more about the book club comes true when her publisher and best friend Sidney (Matthew Goode) tells her that The Times Literary Supplement wants her to write about the benefits of reading. So Juliet packs her bag and hops on a ferry bound for Guernsey—but not before her American boyfriend Mark (Glen Powell), a very wealthy GI, puts a ring on her.

In the small idyllic island blessed with panoramic vistas, Juliet becomes star-struck when she meets the members of the book club, who are all equally star-struck to meet a real writer.

Of course, Juliet finally meets her pen-pal, the poetic and erudite Dawsey, played by Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman. And like a true old-fashioned historical love story, Dawsey turns out to be a ruggedly handsome pig farmer. Guess who eventually wins the heart of the female writer: the book-loving pig farmer or the rich non-literary soldier?

The story, though, is not all about the inevitable romance between the pig farmer and the writer, but it also takes on a mysterious turn when Juliet is stunned to find out that the Society’s leader, Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), is absent. No one would tell Juliet where Elizabeth is, especially the Society’s matriarch, Amelia (Penelope Wilton), who frowns and purses her lip whenever Juliet becomes inquisitive.

Thomas Bezucha and Don Roos’s screenplay adaptation is simplistic and spoon-feeds the viewers. While the story hooks, its predictability and Newell’s overly transparent easy-as-pie treatment takes away a chunk of dramatic tension. Oftentimes, the movie feels just a tad more cinematic than your usual Hallmark fare.

Juliet and Dawsey lack that titillating spark, and apart from several sessions of prolonged eye contacts, their encounters lack tension. They’re most of the time just self-consciously polite to each other. It is Powell’s Mark that incites tension, his presence at a love-triangle moment in the pig farm almost redeems Juliet and Dawsey’s frustrating lack of unspoken romance.

Powell, who we’ve recently seen in another very good Netflix original film Set It Up, and prior to that, as the astronaut in Hidden Figures, is a delight even with his short screen time that you wish Juliet would choose him instead of the bland pig farmer.

The mystery of Elizabeth’s disappearance piques your curiosity, but there’s not much detective work involved—Juliet just repeatedly pesters the club to spill out any information.

To further spoon-feed the viewers, we are also provided with elementary flashbacks. Newell’s treatment is so straightforward and kid-friendly that the Nazi scenes are never threatening. Juliet, though, beautifully expresses her mild PTSD and disorientation about post-war life: “It’s like coming out of a dark tunnel into a carnival,” she tells Mark.

The movie has its small charms and slightly quirky characters. The club’s eccentric and lovelorn Isola (Katherine Parkinson), for one, is an amusing self-confessed virgin who compensates her lack of love life with a copy of Wuthering Heights. Then there’s your stereotypical hypocritical, Bible-thumping character, the owner of the guest house where Juliet is staying. When Juliet raises the Bible in anger and tearfully accuses the intrusive woman how she uses a book that speaks about love as a judgmental weapon is one of the film’s few rousing dialogues.

Breezy, charming and with a scattering of inspiring literary delights, The Guernsey, starring a twinkly-eyed James, is not a film you’d rush to the cinemas for, but it’s just perfect for streaming on a lazy afternoon—a refreshing break from your unhealthy Facebook scrolling.