THE LADY IN THE VAN

Movie:  The Lady in the Van
Jan's Rating:  C+
Time:  1 Hour 44 Minutes

Jan's Review:

This one left the theaters before I got to see it so I rented it on Time Warner yesterday so my sister and I could watch it.  The best part of this movie is Maggie Smith's acting!  She is brilliant!  It is a true story of "Miss Shepherd", played by Maggie Smith, who is homeless and parks her van in a nice neighborhood on the streets but the police keep making her move, so she befriends one of the homeowners and asks if she can park her van in his driveway, telling him she is ill and just has 3 months to live, so he agrees to this and she ends up staying there for 15 years!  The homeowner is Alan Bennett, a playwright in England, and he wrote this story about Miss Shepherd living in his driveway all those years.  The actors have very strong British accents, making it difficult to understand what they are saying most of the time, and the most difficult for me to understand was having two Alan Bennett's in the movie.  Are they twin brothers, or is one the alter ego?  Didn't figure this out until the end. I would not watch it again, but Maggie Smith was wonderful!