‘Onwards And Sideways’ review: Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney form a bittersweet bond in John Madden’s poignant Parkinson’s drama

Dir: John Madden. UK. 2026. 115mins

Tony Evans (Rhys Ifans) is performing as Captain Hook in a pantomime of Peter Pan when a young girl asks why his right hand is frozen. At first he brushes it off but, after visiting a neurologist (Rory Kinnear), he’s diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease – and the doctor thinks Tony might have five years before the illness really takes hold. In that time he meets the vibrant Emma (Laura Linney), a woman with Parkinson’s who forms a fast connection with him. Poignant and irreverent, Onwards And Sideways makes for an impactful, inspirational film about resilience.

A devastatingly bittersweet tale about two people finding strength in one another

It helps that its director, John Madden, knows exactly how to approach the crowdpleasing material. While he will always be best remembered as the director of Shakespeare In Love, in the years since he’s also helmed autumnal stories like the first and second The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies. This film, which premieres as a Gala Presentation in Toronto and is released in the UK on November 16, is sure to appeal to the same viewers who responded to those works. 

Split into five chapters, each covering a year, the North Norfolk-set drama follows Tony as he begins to grapple with the inevitability of his situation. It takes him three months, for instance, before he calls his son to tell him about his diagnosis. A grade school teacher, Tony is also hesitant to inform his principal, fearing he’ll be viewed as an extra expenditure and therefore cut. He doesn’t do his prescribed amount of exercise or drink enough water, and he times his medicine to align with when he must hide his symptoms rather than when it’s most beneficial for his health. 

The only person capable of questioning Tony’s methods is Emma. A pianist and composer and a single mother of two, Emma met Tony under inauspicious circumstances; a confrontation over a hospital parking spot. Both Emma and Tony were diagnosed with Parkinson’s on the same day. Despite them having different symptoms—Emma has tremors while Tony’s hand is frozen—that coincidence immediately binds them. Emma gives Tony pointers and even goads him into attending Parkinson’s ballet with many others fighting the disease.   

Onwards and Sideways is brimming with specifics about the illness due to the personal experience of writer Paul Mayhew-Archer. The Vicar Of Dibley scribe, who also stars here as Tom, a crabby man with Parkinson’s at the ballet class, was diagnosed with the disease in 2011. He fills the scripts with details about symptoms: tremors, loss of smell, rigidity, facial masking, soft speech, etc.—and the side effects of the drugs used to manage it: gambling impulses, insomnia and depression. While this is imperative and eye-opening information, it can sometimes push the dialogue toward the didactic. Characters also drop in and out, like Tony’s son and Emma’s daughters. 

Yet those hiccups aren’t enough to upend Onwards And Sideways, a devastatingly bittersweet tale about two people finding strength in one another to face an uncertain future. Both Ifans and Linney bring that dynamic to life via their attuned physical performances and Madden’s effective staging. As the film stretches on, Ifans allows his limbs to become sticky and his face to be stiff. He also delivers some inventive zingers in a film whose dry wit makes it surprisingly funny. Linney also undergoes a transformation; in one seamlessly edited scene, where she speaks to children about Parkinson’s, she manages to exhibit the disease’s every symptom in the span of a few minutes. 

As the film progresses, Tony and Emma grow closer together, heightening their worries about the difficult future that’s yet to come. Emma develops a gambling habit and other self-destructive tendencies due to her medication. Linney, who gives a tour de force performance, portrays Emma as frazzled and frayed, widening her eyes to frantic proportions. Like Linney’s performance, there’s an eagerness to Onwards and Sideways that helps the film overcome its weaker components.