This page contains various reviews of the movie "Leon the Pig Farmer", in which Mark Frankel played the role of Leon Geller. Below you will find the reviews as they were written... (hopefully) ..... as with any review, some are positive and some are negative.... Either way, we hope that in providing this information, you might find that your interest is peaked and you will seek out the movie and decide for yourself. If you have already seen it, perhaps you'll be interested to see which reviewers, if any, agree with your assessment.....

EDMONTON JOURNAL
Friday, January 7, 1994

Entertainment

Kosher pig tale limp
MARC HORTON Journal Movie Writer
REVIEW

LEON THE PIG FARMER**
Directors: Gary Sinyor, Vadim Jean
Starring: Mark Frankel, Janet Suzman, Brian Glover
Showing at: The Princess Theatre, tonight through Tuesday
Classification: Parental guidance

The British film Leon the Pig Farmer, a movie about love and the development of a kosher pig, should be funnier than it is.

As a concept it sounds daft enough to bring a few laughs, but the pacing is so lead-footed that the movie bogs down in the slop.

Leon Geller, played by Mark Frankel, is a Jewish real estate agent who suffers from compulsive honesty.

He simply must tell clients the complete truth about prospective properties before he closes the sale. And when the firm for which he works decides to buy the house once owned by Charles Dickens and turn it into a leisure centre-complete with an aromatherapy suite-it's too much.

He quits his job to work as a delivery boy for the kosher catering firm owned by his mother, played by Janet Suzman.

When he delivers lunch to a medical office building, he makes a shocking discovery.

(The building's elevator operator is a daffy delight: "Second floor: marriage counseling, sex therapy," he announces.)

It seems that his father had a low sperm count and that Leon is the result of artificial insemination.

His biological father, an eccentric named Brian Chadwick, is a ruddy Yorkshire pig farmer, a shocking thing for a Jewish boy as orthodox as Leon.

The film's highlight occurs when Leon visits the Chadwick pig farm to get to know his father.

The Chadwicks are a welcoming lot, willing to do anything for their new-found relative. That includes embracing the tenets of the Jewish faith, or as many as they can cram in their lives on short notice.

The movie sags, however, when Leon tries to find romance, either in the arms of Madeleine, a stained-glass artist played by Maryam d'Abo, or Lisa, his adventure-seeking neighbor played by Gina Bellman.

The infatuations are only entanglements in the plot, and not particularly necessary ones either.

Leon the Pig Farmer is a small film. And the laughs are little, too.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Wednesday, September 21, 1994

MOVIE REVIEW 'Pig Farmer' Larded With Contrivances

KEVIN THOMAS

"Leon the Pig Farmer" is a conventional, minor British comedy of limited interest that could just as easily have been set in America with virtually no changes.

Mark Frankel is the film's appealing star, a young London Jewish realtor who finally walks out on his rapacious firm only to wind up working for his mother's catering business. It's a familiar story of being pressured to get married, of having a fling with a free-spirited shiksa (Maryam D'Abo) but of finally accepting himself, as the nice but dreamy Jewish girl (Gina Bellman) who thought she wanted a more exciting guy accepts him.

But feature debuting co-producer-directors Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor (Sinyor wrote the script with Michael Normand) throw a monkey wrench in the love-hate view of a Jewish enclave where everybody knows everybody else's business. This occurs when Frankel's Leon Geller discovers he was sired by a sperm bank donor who turns out to be a well-off Gentile Yorkshire pig farmer (Brian Glover), a larger-than-life type with an eccentric and complicated extended family who embrace Leon warmly.

At this point the filmmakers resort to a silly gimmick that is supposed to spin a moral and tie everything up but that instead bulldozes a comedy already strained and overly familiar.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes some mild sensuality and language.

'Leon the Pig Farmer'

Mark Frankel: Leon Geller
Janet Suzman: Judith Geller
Brian Glover: Brian Chadwick
Connie Booth: Yvonne Chadwick
David De Keyser: Sidney Geller
Maryam D'Abo: Madeleine
Gina Bellman: Lisa

A Cinevista and Unapix presentation. Co-producers and directors Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor. Executive producer Paul Brooks. Screenplay by Sinyor, Michael Normand. Cinematographer Gordon Hickie. Editor Ewa J. Lind. Music John Murphy, David Hughes. Production designer Simon Hicks. Running time: 1 hour, 42 min.

TIMES OF LONDON
Thursday, February 25, 1993

Features

Two hours of a life sentence: Cinema
Geoff Brown

Leon the Pig Farmer, a British independent production, had no access to Hollywood-sized finances. The cast and crew worked on deferment, while the working budget was just Pounds 160,000, supplied by 40 investors. Yet its exuberance and polish makes much of Honeymoon look limp. Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor, the young directors whose debut, this is, clearly love the film medium, and they extract full value from every pound spent, every location visited.

Leon, their bemused hero (Mark Frankel), is a sensitive Jewish lad from north London who learns that he is a product of artificial insemination. Worse still, his biological father is a bluff Yorkshire pig farmer, played in rafters-ringing style by Brian Glover. Subtlety is not the film's strongest suit, and the script's silliness gets totally out of hand when Leon produces kosher livestock by injecting a pig with sheep's semen. But, before this calamity, there is plenty here to enjoy, from the comic swipes at Jewish and gentile life (likely to upset only the most orthodox of souls) to the directors' infectious joie de vivre.

Thursday, February 25, 1993

The Arts:  Curly tale of a Jewish boy in finding his roots
HUGO DAVENPORT

IT IS an old saw in the entertainment business that escapist comedy will do brisk business during the times of recession.  And there are now indisputable signs that the British talent for making funny films, long sunk in the depressive doldrums, is undergoing a much-needed renaissance.

During the past year or so, we have seen Hear My Song, Peter's Friends and Soft Top, Hard Shoulder-British films which have brought a degree of pleasure to audiences out of all proportion to their modest budgets.  This week sees the release of what is, for my money, the funniest yet: the crazy eccentric Leon the Pig Farmer.

This loony film, at once demented comedy of manners and blithe excursion into home-grow n surrealism, was made for #150,000-a pittance even by British standards.  A top-notch cast and crew agreed to work for nothing after the joint director-producers, first-timers Gary Sinyor and Vadim Jean, were turned down flat by the BFI, British Screen and Channel 4.  All three should now be kicking themselves.

Leon Geller (Mark Frankel), a nice Jewish boy from north London with a good job as an estate agent, discovers by accident that his real father is not, after all, the net-curtain manufacturing king Sidney Geller (David De  Keyser).  Thanks to an error by the artificial insemination clinic which once treated his mother, Judith (Janet Suzman), he is actually the son and heir of Yorkshire pig farmer Brian Chadwick (Brian Glover).

Dumped by his old flame, Lisa (Gina Bellman), and then by his gorgeous non-Jewish girlfriend, Madeleine (Maryam D'Abo)-she likes Jewish men for their intensity, not to mention their aptness as subjects for her
crucifixion sketches-Leon heads north to find his real father.  Before long Brian and his wife, Yvonne (Connie Booth), are adopting Jewish customs to make him feel at home while Leon reluctantly learns the art of artificially inseminating pigs.

The film has a ripe, seaside-postcard naughtiness.  It extracts much comic mileage from kosher custom and from the device of having total strangers, inexplicably knowledgeable about Leon's private affairs, butt in constantly with finger-wagging advice like some paranoic Greek chorus.  And the pitch of absurdity is gleefully raised throughout.

Leon has his own cross-breeding accident with a pig and a sheep;  when the two sets of parents meet, the Chadwicks act Jewish, while the Gellers assume lah-di-dah county accents.  The mockery is very funny and disarmingly even-handed; at  once affectionate and satirical towards Jewishness.  An off-the-wall-off the wailing wall, in fact-delight.