Simon Curtis

Dinosaur review

This spiky and heartfelt comedy might be powered by the lead character's autism, but it's not defined by it. It gives people with the condition a long overdue voice.

Jack Seale, The Guardian, 16th April 2024

Freezing is directed by Simon Curtis, who in real life is married to the American actress Elizabeth McGovern. In Freezing, she plays an American actress called Elizabeth, who is married instead to Matt, a publisher who has recently been let go by the publishing house he works for. And, despite being fictional, Matt, played by Hugh Bonneville, is on speaking terms with various of Elizabeth's celebrity colleagues.

Wood's script is mostly built around career disappointment, with Matt haplessly trying to crank up some alternative career and McGovern falling prey to the lethally short life-span of the female screen career. Her agent, played by Tom Hollander as a caricature of vulgar rapacity, wanted her to fill in a quiet patch with a cameo on Holby City, where she had a chance to play a woman allergic to horsehair. But McGovern was holding out for a part in Vincent Gallo's next movie, a sexual road trip, which triggered a certain anxiety in Matt about the director's notorious commitment to authenticity in performance. At which point, it struck me that Elizabeth McGovern would never get cast in a Vincent Gallo movie, and would probably run a mile if approached. He was only the director in question because he made Chloë Sevigny give him a blow job in The Brown Bunny and Matt's jealousy needed to be tweaked. And when Alan Yentob turned up - doing a bit of 'I'll have my people call your people' schmooze in another popular Notting Hill restaurant - it occurred to me that the target audience for this series consists of around 1,000 people, almost all of whom have a W11 postcode. It might be more cost-effective just to run off some DVDs and bike it round Curtis and Wood's Christmas-card list.

Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent, 21st February 2008