An Awfully Big Adventure is a 1995 British coming-of-age film directed by Mike Newell. The story focuses on a teenage girl who joins a seedy theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue. The title is an ironic nod to the original Peter Pan story, in which Peter says "To die will be an awfully big adventure." Set during the years following World War II, the film was adapted from the Booker Prize-nominated novel of the same name by Beryl Bainbridge. In... the film's prologue, a hotelier ushers a child into a bomb shelter during the Liverpool Blitz. We see a brief flashback to a woman leaving her baby in a basement surrounded by flickering candles. Before departing from the house, she quickly drops a string of pearls on the child's pillow, twined around a single rose. Years later, 16-year-old Stella Bradshaw lives in a working class household with her Uncle Vernon and Aunt Lily in Liverpool.
more
| Release date: | April 7, 1995 |
| Directed by: | Mike Newell |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 112 Minutes |
| Producer: | Hilary Dwyer |
| Music by: | Richard Hartley |
| Cinematography: | Dick Pope |
| Screenplay by: | Charles Wood |
| Estimated budget: | $4,000,000 |
| Adapted from: | An Awfully Big Adventure |
| Genre: | Comedy |