There's an outside chance that this looked promising at the pitch stage but any misgivings should have been heeded. It's fairly clear that someone involved, either the writers, who pitched it to a production company or a producer who subsequently hired writers, saw Regis Warniers Est-Ouest - a drama in which a French woman, Sandrine Bonnaire, married to a Russian doctor, Oleg Menshikov, accompanies him to Russia in 1946 against her better judgment, is terribly unhappy there and escapes - and Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye, Lenin - a comedy in which a dedicated Communist, Katrin Sals, living in East Germany, falls into a coma shortly before the 'Wall' comes down, wakens some time afterward but cannot be told she is now in the WEST lest she suffers a heart attack - and decided a combination of the two would surely clean up at the Box Office (both films were highly praised and garnered several nominations) and then delivered a film that is neither funny or dramatic. Alternatively, someone concerned saw The Lives Of Others at the beginning of the year and dashed off Ratcliffe in about ten days. If ideas were all it took then I myself and probably half of you out there would be millionaires many times over but as we all know ideas need a little back-up, like talent, ability, competence. Iain Glen is a very fine stage actor but doesn't have the best record when it comes to picking films, similarly Catherine Tate is also a fine stage actress and an equally fine writer and comedienne - it was in fact her name that 'sold' this movie to me - so the two leads tick all the boxes where talent, ability and competence are concerned. The two writers are something else, Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan have only one previous credit, Sixty Six, which again they wrote in tandem and which sunk without trace. The premise is simple: a dedicated communist living in 1960s Yorkshire, applies, without consulting his family - wife, brother-in-law, two daughters, for a teaching post in what was then 'East' Germany. Having been offered the post - teaching English Literature - he proposes that they move en masse and meets surprisingly little or no resistance, no worries about leaving friends behind, changing schools, etc, in other words, unrealistic. The regime they encounter is strangely benign and although the Stasi is acknowledged - indeed both Mr Ratcliffe and his youngest daughter are soon on the payroll as it were - it is an equally benign outfit and no one is actually tortured/killed as a result of information obtained. There is absolutely zero chemistry between Glenn and Tate (who becomes quite adept at escape) so that we are unable to work up much of a sweat about their eventual reconciliation. This should have gone straight to video thence to oblivion.

Mr. RADCLIFF dreams of a communist society, and has his brain-washed his daughter into going along with him. He thrives for it. So he jumps at the chance to teach in EAST Germany and move his family there. From the beginning with the BORDER GUARDS laffing at him for moving there you see a mans dreams crash before him.

In ENGLAND he was the head of the family. His doting wife a meek homemaker, takes to wheeling and dealing to survive in a communist country. She consorts with smugglers, extortionists, soldiers and other assorted outcasts of communist society. His youngest daughter a comrade in the COMMUNIST lifestyle takes to spying on the family, and turning them in for infractions. His brother in-law a subservient to him gets some back-bone and tells him off lets him have it about certain communist heroes he had. his oldest daughter a counter-culture and a hoe, finds herself and looses her free spirit.

Mr. RADLIFF himself starts to realize that a big part of communist society is keeping out western influences as his students are being dragged away for asking about mayonnaise (something he refers as caviar for the poor). Neighbords are dragged away for simple infractions. the dream of everyone helping each other for the greater good are dashed as no-one does anything unless they're getting paid.

That being said his wife and the neighbor lady had some big-uns.

Maybe it's because I am an American living in the UK (four years now) and I have low expectations for British made films at this point, but I didn't think this was a bad movie at all! And I don't even like Catherine Tate! Well, I didn't, but I do now.

The movie is based on a true story, and I guess true stories can only only be funny incidentally. It does not have laugh out loud moments, but I didn't fast forward through any of it either. Catherine Tate is really lovely in this film, but then again, she is really the only truly filled out character in the movie. She's a put upon housewife and her struggle to remain in control of a household in a country where you can't even control your own wallpaper is amusing. My family was stationed in Germany in the seventies, and I think this film is a pretty light-hearted view of everything, really skimming over people being shot and led away, so it is hard to take it too seriously.

I think what is lacking in this movie is that, because it is based on facts, and although they ARE interesting facts, it tries to fit so much in that it cannot always give us enough of every character. Her daughters feel like caricatures, one like a child of the damned really, as does her husband, and even the Germans around them. Despite her brother having nearly no lines, he is a pretty solid character and I kept wanting to see more of him. Her neighbor is also very intriguing, although I wanted her to have a bit more screen time as well.

Part of the movie preview I saw, had it say that she wanted to save her children from a bleak future, but I don't feel that the children's future looked so bleak. The youngest one was involved in sports and winning lots of things, as well as joining in clubs. They make an attempt to show her as an outsider, but never go into detail. As for her older daughter, all she was doing in the UK was sleeping around, and she's still sleeping around, so I don't see the difference. She only seems to be miserable that she can't listen to the music she wants to. her clothes and hair don't change, and she was moody before. I think Mrs. Ratcliffe's main motive's for leaving are feeling useless, bored, and utterly depressed and frightened by the fact her neighbors keep disappearing. The final straw clearly is being spied on. I think she just doesn't want to live with the fear anymore. I think that should have been explored more. Catherine Tate does her best to express this with her face and her tone of voice, but no one wrote it for her in depth and so she can't act on it.

But for having oh, eight main characters, and a crazy sequence of events, I think the film does it's best. I only rented it, but I did watch it a second time before bringing it back. I wish they had made it darker so it would have been a real black comedy, but, like I said, it's not that bad!