\n<\/p>\n
E<\/span>very now and then, a strange forgotten chapter of life during Covid will interrupt my thoughts. Remember when we used to fake happy hour merriment on the Houseparty<\/a> app? Or when Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor made an unwatchably awful film<\/a> about stealing diamonds from Harrods during lockdown? Or how about when people developed an unhealthy obsession with a Netflix documentary<\/a> about a man with an unhealthy obsession with an octopus?<\/p>\n The unavoidability of My Octopus Teacher led to everything from a creepy spike in people googling \u201cdid octopus teacher sex with octopus\u201d (time-saver: he didn\u2019t) to an unforgivably undeserved Oscar win for best documentary (Collective<\/a>, you were robbed) and then, while not a direct on-record inspiration, it at least paved the way for the success of Shelby Van Pelt\u2019s best-selling novel Remarkably Bright Creatures in 2022. The book, which hinges on the bond between an elderly cleaner and a grumpy octopus, gave those still yearning for more octopus teaching a gentle summer read with no weird questions needing to be asked and now, inevitably, the adaptation lands on Netflix to be filed in the growing \u201cinspiring octopus movie\u201d section.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a film that can also sit in the streamer\u2019s row of originals aimed at an older audience, alongside gentle afternoon watches like Nonnas<\/a>, Our Souls at Night<\/a>, Juanita<\/a> and Otherhood<\/a>. Like those films it welcomes in an actor we haven\u2019t seen as much lately as we once did \u2013 Sally Field in this instance \u2013 and grants her more screen time than she has been given in over a decade \u2013 her last lead role was 2015\u2019s Hello, My Name Is Doris. I\u2019m not sure how much of the film would really work without her anchoring it \u2013 she adds volume to what\u2019s otherwise a pretty low-level hum \u2013 but with Field smoothly moving between comedy and drama in a film that can\u2019t always move quite so gracefully, it all just about stays afloat.<\/p>\n