Peter O'Toole, left, and Jeremy Northam will star alongside Sam Neill and Bryan Brown in "Dean Spanley" from Toa Fraser, whose debut film -- "No.

It's a dog's past life in "Dean Spanley," an immaculately cast, nicely handled and wafer-thin slice of Brit period-dress whimsy.

This is, unfortunately, treated as a serious, emotional drama. What’s more, look at this cast — Jeremy Northam, Sam Neill, Byron Brown and Peter O’Toole! Crikey, what was everybody thinking?

Peter O'Toole and Jeremy Northam excel as a reconnecting father and son in Dean Spanley.

Paramount acquires rights to 'Dean Spanley Paramount Pictures has acquired the Australian and New Zealand rights to "Dean Spanley," a star-studded, big-screen period drama, Variety.com said Monday.

Set in the Edwardian era, Peter OToole is the curmudgeonlyHoratio Fisk whose few pleasures left in life include belittling hiswell-meaning son Henslowe (Jeremy Northam).

Fisk Junior (Jeremy Northam) has three chance encounters with the mysterious Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), and discovers that, under the influence of his favourite tipple, Dean remembers a very odd ...

Paramount Pictures has acquired the Australian and New Zealand rights to "Dean Spanley," a star-studded, big-screen period drama, Variety.com said Monday.

From a story by Lord Dunsany, an Anglo-Irish yarn-spinner hardly anybody reads any more, it's the story of a middle-aged man, played by Jeremy Northam, who persuades his cantankerous father (Peter ...

The year is 1904, and the narrator Henslowe Fisk (Jeremy Northam) is locked into a ghastly ritual with his cantankerous elderly father Horatio (Peter O'Toole).

It's a dog's past life in "Dean Spanley," an immaculately cast, nicely handled and wafer-thin slice of Brit period-dress whimsy.