Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, Michael Gambon
Director: Michael Apted
Category: I
Friedrich Nietzsche once said: 'In heaven all the interesting people are missing.' If that's the case, English abolitionist William Wilberforce is now upstairs. Amazing Grace, Michael Apted's pious biography of the parliamentarian who helped end slavery in 19th-century England, suffers precisely because this do-gooder is so righteous, moral and boring.
Starring Fantastic Four's Ioan Gruffudd, the film's aim is to uplift and sway - it's being heavily pushed to Christian groups - but the saintliness also makes it humourless and pedantic. Who knows if the real Wilberforce was this inscrutable and faultless, but as a character unfortunately he's really dull.
It doesn't help that the cumbersome narrative jumps back and forth needlessly, as the abolition movement ebbs and flows with the times. Against a background of rebellious American colonies and a war with France, Wilberforce - who was supposed to be a good orator with a nice singing voice - seems to have no political sense.
