Black Mountain Poets (2015) Alice Lowe, Dolly Wells, Tom Cullen, Rosa Robson, Richard Elis Movie Review

Black Mountain Poets (2015)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Black Mountain Poets (2015)

Passing on the Poetry

Lisa (Alice Lowe) and Claire (Dolly Wells) are a couple of con artists who after bungling a robbery end up not only on the run in Wales but stealing a car which as it turns out belongs to avant garde poets, the Wilding Sisters. With nothing else to do Lisa and Claire head off to the Black Mountains of Wales passing themselves off as the Wilding Sisters at a retreat for poets. It is there they not only try to con their way to win a poetry prize but become involved with Richard (Tom Cullen) a frustrated poet. But with Richard's ex showing up things are not easy.

I am pretty sure I heard somewhere that when they made "Black Mountain Poets" the cast and crew went off to the hills of Wales for 5 days and made the movie, a sort of movie making retreat if you like. The end result is clearly a movie which has entertained some as I found one positive review after another for this budget indie movie. But I guess that despite liking to challenge myself with indie cinema this movie was not for me, delivering the sort of humour which I struggle to see what is so funny about it as well as characters which rather than being entertaining end up annoying.

Of course part of "Black Mountain Poets" is to take a bit of a comical swipe at the pretentious nature of some poets and the random nature of some poetry. The trouble is that whilst it does this it ends up feeling a little pretentious itself with the annoying nature of the characters and curious humour. And there is more to it than just that as Lisa and Claire do go on a bit of a character journey but I have to say I struggled to find them interesting enough to care.

What this all boils down to is that "Black Mountain Poets" was not for me and ended up one of those indie movies which simply failed to connect with me. But each to their own and it seems there are many who have found the humour in this enjoyable.


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