The Last Bus

Is the fare for The Last Bus worth it? Spall’s performance ensures that the answer is a resounding yes! But, there is a caveat: viewers certainly shouldn’t expect a ride filled with joy and laughter.

For a tender movie that follows an old man on a long and demanding multi-bus excursion to honor his late wife’s wishes, the placid affair has curiously little emotional range, and an even narrower sense of stakes

The journey is a nice excuse to paint Tom into a cheerily cosmopolitan portrait of the UK.

Try as I might, I couldn’t make friends with this weirdly unreal and sentimental Britmovie in the last-journey-with-someone’s-ashes genre. But it is certainly acted with commitment and integrity by Timothy Spall.

As beautiful as some of the landscapes are, and as brilliant as Spall is in repose, there is only so much sitting on a bus looking wistful that one actor can do. Other than Spall’s steady gaze and some mood-book photography, The Last Bus has little to recommend it.