In 2002, Mary Reynolds, a young woman of determination and vigour, became the first Irish person to win a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.
This is an important thing. We know it's important because, in this harmless dramatisation of her story, people stop, at every opportunity, to inform other people that Chelsea is a really big deal. Indeed, characters are, throughout Dare to Be Wild, constantly telling folk things they already know.
“As an international rock star,” Mary says to an international rock star (game Karl Shiels) during a consultation on his shrubs or whatever. Even the awful sentences in Dan Brown’s novels are less packed with exposition and explanation.
What we have here is an attempt to turn an interesting true story into a heart-warming drama in the style of Calendar Girls. It is divided into neat acts. It has identifiable villains. There is a reverse at the last moment that (surely, no spoilers here) is overcome in heroic style. If you like plenty of corn with your inspirational hokum then you won't be sending it back to the kitchen.
Emma Greenwell is charming enough as a woman who, after apparently seeing faeries as a child, grows into an evangelist for natural garden design. In an early scene, Mary meets Christy Collard (Tom Hughes), a hilariously gorgeous ecological campaigner while seeking work with an initially evil horticultural bigwig (Christine Marzano).
After many ups and downs, Mary finds herself competing against Cruella de Dahlia at (if I’ve been listening properly) the most important horticultural jamboree in the world.
Dare to Be Wild is certainly very pretty and even has a hint of epic to it (thanks to an overextended, largely superfluous trip to Ethiopia). But, by golly, this is broad stuff. This is film in which, to confirm the Chelsea administrator's Englishness, the great Alex Macqueen is asked to do calisthenics to Rule Britannia. I'm not making that up.
