"You are," the theater director assures his cast on the first day of rehearsals, "the very best people we could find - for the money." They look glum at this news, but not surprised. The director, named Meredith Potter and played by Hugh Grant, is himself a damaged piece of goods - a bitter, chain-smoking man whose emotions are reined in too tightly because, we suspect, he once let them out too loosely, and got hurt.

Into this morass wanders a stage-struck local girl named Stella (Georgina Cates), who will take a job, any job, just to be near what she sees as theatrical glamor - and, in her town, she's right. She gets hired as the assistant stage manager, and soon begins discovering and guessing the various secrets of the company - although some very big ones are saved for the end of the film. And she becomes the object of passes from some of the men in the company, although she has a rather chilling effect on one when she replies to his advance, "I don't like the feeling of it, thank you very much."

Stella is not the most attractive of young women, and some critics have faulted the film because members of the company are drawn to her. They miss the point, which is that in their desperate situation, emotional beggars can't afford to be choosers, and Stella's relative innocence and naivete make her glow in contrast to the weariness all around.

The company struggles through its repertory season, until a mishap leaves them shorthanded. There is nothing to do but call on the legendary P.L. O'Hara, played by that invaluable British character actor Alan Rickman as a man of great talent who has lost his way, and who masks despair with cynicism.

Rickman (a villain in American movies such as "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves") is the company's former resident villain - the best Capt. Hook anyone has ever seen. Soon he has his hooks in poor Stella, who is not so much defenseless as cooperative; she surrenders in anticipation of his attack.

As a portrait of the company and its emotional tangles, "An Awfully Big Adventure" has a gritty authenticity; it's based on a novel by Beryl Bainbridge, who may be transmuting some of her own early experiences. But as drama and melodrama, the movie stumbles. The surprising revelations at the end are so enormous that, in all fairness, they belong nearer the beginning; the whole film is a warm-up for a third act that never happens.

The movie was directed by Mike Newell ("Enchanted April," "Four Weddings and a Funeral"), who grapples with the problem that no one in the movie is especially nice. Hugh Grant, who made this film before "Four Weddings," has recently had to face the criticism that he works too hard at being ingratiating and likable. Not in this film; along with "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain," it shows that he has range as an actor. But his character desperately cries out for others who will be counterpoint, instead of harmony, to the general gloom.

AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE

P.L. O'Hara ..... Alan Rickman
Meredith Potter ..... Hugh Grant
Stella Bradshaw ..... Georgina Cates
Uncle Vernon ..... Alun Armstrong
Bunny ..... Peter Firth
John Harbour ..... James Frain

Directed by Mike Newell.
Written by Charles Wood, based on a novel by Beryl Bainbridge.
Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality and some language).

Cast: Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Georgina Cates, Alun Armstrong, Alan Cox, Carol Drinkwater, Peter Firth, Nicola Paggett, Edward Petherbridge, Prunella Scales
Director: Mike Newell
Producer: Hilary Heath, Philip Hinchcliffe
Screenplay: Charles Wood based on the novel by Beryl Bainbridge
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Music: Richard Hartley
U.S. Distributor: Miramax Films

An Awfully Big Adventure, director Mike Newell's followup to his international hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, has little in common with that riotously funny comedy. Grim, somber, and chaotic, this film takes a look at life behind the scenes of a small, low-budget theater troupe performing in Liverpool during the late 1940s, with special emphasis on one young girl's loss of innocence. The Stella who starts this story as a generally well-adjusted 16-year old with acting aspirations is far from the dispirited, disillusioned young woman who ends it.

It's potentially compelling material, but the script and editing are a mess. An Awfully Big Adventure is so badly disjointed that it never really gets on track. Entire scenes seem to be missing and often what is there makes little sense. Added to that, a crucial character doesn't make his first appearance until more than halfway through the proceedings. By that time, my patience with this rambling motion picture was wearing thin.

Stella, as nicely played by Georgina Cates, is ostensibly the film's central character -- at least for the first hour. After that, things get muddled, with the viewpoint switching back and forth between Stella and aging ex-matinee idol P. L. O'Hara (Alan Rickman), who has entered the company to play Captain Hook in "Peter Pan" following an unfortunate accident to his predecessor. Neither Stella nor O'Hara really captures the audience's sympathy, so the shifting perspective further distances the viewer from the lives being autopsied by Newell's direction.

Anyway, Stella joins the theater troupe of Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant) as an unpaid assistant stage manager. The actors are a ragtag bunch -- "the very best... for [virtually no] money" -- and appear better at drinking and engaging in other scandalous behavior than in delivering on stage. Exposed to such excellent examples of human degradation, it's no surprise that Stella's own moral character goes into rapid decline. It isn't long before she's sleeping with a man she doesn't love while pining for Potter, who shows more interest in boys than girls.

The cast is top-notch, with only Hugh Grant struggling to find his character. There are a number of familiar faces on hand for those who enjoy British TV, including Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers), Edward Petherbridge (Lord Peter Wimsey, version two), and Nicola Paggett (Anna Karenina). Despite the solid performances, however, the uneven tone and porous script keep the viewer at arm's length. Several attempts at comedy are off-putting, primarily because they occur at inappropriate moments.

A vast departure from recent Newell successes like Four Weddings and Enchanted April, An Awfully Big Adventure aims for, and largely misses, a rich emotional vein. Stella's story is a tragedy with the sort of universal scope everyone can understand. Unfortunately, this film mishandles its primary subject matter. The behind-the-scenes wrangling of actors is entertaining, as is the sniping between Potter and the members of his troupe, but these are peripheral issues. And that's the problem -- the movie doesn't have a clear idea of what it's really trying to do. The result is that An Awfully Big Adventure is awfully unsatisfying.

© 1995 James Berardinelli

Based on Beryl Bainbridge's post-World War II novel, this offbeat tale takes its title from a line in "Peter Pan," the perennial finale of the company's winter season. Stella, who never knew her father and was abandoned by her unwed mother, is clearly one of the world's lost children, never mind her blooming sensuality. The allusions to the escapist children's play are many, but hardly endearing.

While she develops a fierce crush on the company's gay director (Grant), it's the troupe's Captain Hook who seduces the willing Stella. It's no coincidence that the same dashing actor, P.L. O'Hara (Alan Rickman), also plays Mr. Darling—an allusion to the film's perverse outcome. In remaining too faithful to Bainbridge's novel, screenwriter Charles Wood sabotages the movie; he never really prepares viewers for this Freudian turn.

Though he plays a hopeless cad, Rickman gives the most sympathetic performance, not because he's the film's most tragic figure or its sexiest, but because he is its most fully formed. His O'Hara seems utterly bewildered by his obsession with Cates's achingly innocent yet uncannily observant Stella. Grant is also deliciously vile as a monocle-wearing snot, and there are a number of other fine supporting players, especially Peter Firth as the troupe's put-upon stage manager.

Don't expect the froth of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" from this film. "An Awfully Big Adventure" has far more in common with Newell's darker tales of obsession ("The Good Father" and "Dance With a Stranger"). Even Tinker Bell dies. An Awfully Big Adventure is rated R for sexuality, nudity and profanity.

"An Awfully Big Adventure," based on the Beryl Bainbridge novel, has its share of life-in-the-theater shenanigans, and some of them are flavorful. Set in 1947 in Liverpool, it's about stage-struck 16-year-old Stella (Georgina Cates), who becomes an assistant stage manager for a theater company run by the imperially effete Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant). The troupe is scheduled to put on three plays in six weeks, including "Peter Pan," and the movie itself is a kind of "Peter Pan" in reverse. Without being terribly worldly, Stella enters into a world that wises her up fast. She's ripe for the learning, which includes sexual learning.

Director Mike Newell and screenwriter Charles Wood give Stella's sentimental education a decidedly unsentimental cast. Though the film captures a little of the knockabout frivolity of low-grade theater life, it plays up the sordidness. "An Awfully Big Adventure" is a valentine etched in acid.

Newell, who last directed the overrated high-brow slapstick "Four Weddings and a Funeral," goes in for a more somber mood here. Too somber, actually. What he shows us is so dank that we can't see how a girl's genuine love of the theater could force itself through all this gloom. Stella is a bit of a plaything with the troupe; and she's a bit of a plaything with the filmmakers, too.

Cates is believable in the role and, at times, as in her scenes with the troupe's Captain Hook (Alan Rickman), she's more than that. But Stella's yearning for Potter is too bedewed for someone so cagey.

As Grant plays him, Potter, who is vicious with his boyfriends in the troupe, carries on like a cross between Alastair Sim and Dame Edna. Grant tries to turn his patented flibbertigibbet charm into something acrid. He overdoes both the charm and the acridness.

The best reason to see the film is for Rickman's withering portrait of a moody rotter. He's such a stunning actor that, even though he turns up in the film more than halfway through, he immediately makes it his. He gives the film--or at least his role--a tragic dimension. And, in so doing, he justifies a life in the theater.

An Awfully Big Adventure, 1995. R, for sexuality and some language. A Fine Line Features presentation. Director Mike Newell. Producer Hilary Heath. Executive producer John Kelleher. Screenplay by Charles Wood. Cinematographer Dick Pope. Editor Jon Gregory. Costumes Joan Bergin. Music Richard Hartley. Production design Mark Geraghty. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes. Alan Rickman as P. J. O'Hara. Hugh Grant as Meredith Potter. Georgina Cates as Stella Bradshaw. Peter Firth as Bunny.

First off, it's the latest film from director Mike Newell, an eccentric fellow whose wide-ranging tastes have given us gems such as Dance With A Stranger, Soursweet, Enchanted April, Into The West and the surprise boxoffice and Oscar champion Four Weddings And A Funeral.

An Awfully Big Adventure boasts an interesting starring lineup, including Four Weddings star Hugh Grant - him again! - and the gifted if darkly moody Alan Rickman.

It is set in an unusual time and space: Liverpool in the 1940s with the "adventure" taking place within a tacky repertory theatre group putting on second-rate shows to amuse the post-war, shell-shocked populace.

The twist in the new film is that Grant sheds his bumbling and lovable leading man persona and plays a thoroughly despicable little sot. He is the theatre's self-righteous director. He also happens to be gay, a predator, totally amoral and viciously wicked.

Grant so thoroughly inhabits the role it's hard to believe he's the same guy who played the romantic fool in Four Weddings. This new role is a mean laugh-riot.

Rickman, meanwhile, is an actor with a penchant for villainy. Witness his delicious embrace of evil in films such as Kevin Costner's Robin Hood. But, in An Awfully Big Adventure, he plays the actor with the wounded heart and pained soul who arrives mid-movie to play Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan.

It is Rickman who is supposed to carry the emotional weight of the film - but it is here that An Awfully Big Adventure gets awfully weird and starts to self-destruct.

The entire story is seen through the eyes of the rep company's ingenue (played endearingly by Liverpool newcomer Georgina Cates). She is naive to an astonishing degree. But she is so free with her oddball observations you grow to care for her, as do the characters on screen.

Unfortunately, the Big Adventure - it's hers - includes a romance with Rickman. The film takes a sordid turn that is so blatantly obvious that it spoils everything Newell had accomplished in the lively early segments.

This lurid plotting problem - which I cannot discuss in print - accounts for the low rating, although two sunbursts is probably stingy. But three is just too much. It would have been awfully misleading.

The premise is promising: a vicious, nicotine-stained homosexual (that's our Hugh) runs the troupe with his lap-dog lover (Peter Firth) and inspires loyalty through intimidation and divide-and-conquer ploys. Meanwhile, the leading man (Alan Rickman), a dashing figure on a motorcycle, starts bedding Stella (Georgina Cates), a stage- struck apprentice, and falls apart when a dark secret is revealed.

Shades of ``Bullets Over Broadway,'' perhaps? With some of the backstage high jinks and the regional flavor of ``A Man of No Importance'' or ``The Dresser''? Not quite: This isn't a sentimental slice of British eccentricity, or a gentle glance at amateur theatricals and the oddballs who inhabit them.

Instead, it's a sour, unpleasant experience that gives us every reason not to become involved. Newell, who directed ``Four Weddings'' with such a light touch and such fondness, leaves the impression here that he doesn't like his characters and doesn't mind if we don't, either.

NOT PLAYED FOR LAUGHS

Grant's character, the monocled, chain-smoking Meredith Potter, isn't played for laughs, but is presented as an unredeemable cobra who thrives on his own venom. When an actor approaches him and pleads, ``I'm having trouble finding my character,'' Meredith merely sniffs, ``So I've noticed.'' (Grant's best line is the one that inadvertently comments on the actor's real-life hooker-hiring shenanigans. ``You all know me, or what they say about me,'' his character tells the company of actors, ``and all of that is true.'')

Even Georgina Cates, who should have have provided the emotional hook we need, fails to register as naive, motherless Stella. Like her character, she tries a bit too hard, and demonstrates more ambition than talent.

It's only when Rickman's character arrives that ``Adventure'' gains a spark. His character, the self-important, secretly demoralized P.L. O'Hara, is a male diva who wears long scarves, condescends to his fellow actors, and makes a grand, hambone display as Captain Hook in ``Peter Pan.''

At its worst, ``Awfully'' plays like a vanity production for Grant -- a chance to prove that he can do more than stammer, fuss and exercise his cuteness muscles. At its best, it make a statement about the corruption of power (Grant and Rickman are both glaring examples), and illustrates the careless abuse of innocence -- revealed in a shocking curtain closer.

Had Newell developed those themes, instead of smothering the emotion and sentiment in his film, ``Adventure'' might be more satisfying, and less chilly. But even his editing -- patchy, disjointed -- seems designed to thwart our involvement.

OFF-CAMERA TALE

The most interesting thing about ``Adventure'' is the off-camera tale of Cates and how she nailed her part. Actually, she's Clare Woodgate, an actress who heard about the production and then concocted a lie about her age, name and origins to get the part. It was only after ``Adventure'' was finished that Woodgate revealed her true identity and admitted that she wasn't an unsophisticated Liverpool teenager, after all. In essence, she gave a double performance throughout the production -- but to little avail.

AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE: Drama. Starring Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Georgina Cates and Peter Firth. Directed by Mike Newell. (R. 113 minutes. At the Embarcadero Cinema.)

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle