"I don't like being old; it's shit." This trenchant observation from one of the inmates of Woodlands Retirement Home neatly sums up the message of How About You, a film whose worthiness is as self-conscious as a primping teenage girl, which is ironic given that it's all about Old People

Adapted from a short story by every-grandmother's-favourite, Maeve Binchy (Circle Of Friends), the tale is flimsy at best, but makes up in emotive string-pulling what it lacks in substance. Ellie (Hayley Atwell), the youthful black sheep of her family, unwillingly takes up a job at the retirement home run by her widowed older sister, Kate (Orla Brady). When the girls' mother is taken ill over Christmas, Ellie is left alone in charge of the four "hardcore" residents who remain, and whose difficult behaviour is threatening to ruin Kate's business. Faced with their petulance and eccentricity, Ellie employs unorthodox methods of her own in an attempt to salvage her Christmas and save Woodlands from closure.

With Vanessa Redgrave, Joss Ackland, Brenda Fricker and Imelda Staunton making up the elderly quartet, the film is not light on talent. Redgrave and Ackland clearly relish their respective roles as washed-up actress and bitter widower, and Fricker and Staunton bring real emotional nuance to their characters. Yet it is as though director Anthony Byrne doesn't trust the breezy and unemotional efficiency of the performances to carry the film, and overloads the mise-en-scene with every atmospheric snow-falling-on-autumn-leaves cliche imaginable. How About You is a competent and fairly harmless film, and is every bit as unexciting as that sounds - but if you're looking for something wholly unchallenging to pass the time, then this is the film for you.