Thursday, January 01, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: The half-full Monty

Calendar Girls' British dames keep scanty caricatures on

By Tammy McMahan

Calendar Girls features the scenic splendor of the Yorkshire Dales, some of England's best-known and respected actresses and it's directed by an Englishman. So it should come together to make an authentically British cinematic experience, right? Wrong.

Like a number of releases from across the pond, Saving Grace director Nigel Cole's second feature has been Americanized for maximum U.S. crowd-pleasing and moneymaking effect. Based on a true story, Cole's film follows the trials and triumphs of a group of middle-aged ladies who pose nude for a Women's Institute calendar to raise money for a leukemia unit where the husband of one member of the matronly organization died. When the calendar becomes an international success and Hollywood comes calling, the women grapple with the stresses placed upon their families and friendships.

Cole and screenwriters Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth blatantly attempt to capitalize on American Anglophilia for good reason. American moviegoers will shell out big bucks to see their romanticized vision of Great Britain and Britishers on the silver screen. This idealized Limey-land can be a quaint village surrounded by rolling, sheep-dotted hills or smart London flats near busy streets on which red double-decker buses roll. Of course, there are numerous quirky characters who spout cheeky witticisms on cue.

The success of A Fish Called Wanda, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full Monty, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary is testament to the fact that playing to such stereotypes works. Calendar Girls may share their marketing strategy, but the similarity ends there. Where Wanda, Monty and company were wickedly funny and thoughtful throughout, Calendar Girls is an uneven mix of humor and drama. Like certain big-budget American counterparts, it relies heavily on formulaic comedy situations resulting in pervasive blandness and a dearth of surprises. Only the photo shoot sequences offer flashes of real hilarity.

Also mirroring mediocre American fare, the characters here are so familiar that no intellectual demands are made on the audience. No plumbing of their depths is required. All would be lost were it not for a few scenes in which great talents Helen Mirren (as Chris Harper) and Julie Walters (Annie Clarke) dare to be unsafe and explore the passion and pathos inherent in their roles.

Mirren, playing against her usual understated, serious types (think "Prime Suspect's" Inspector Jane Tennison), plunges headlong into Chris' attention-seeking, extroverted, "leap first, look later" persona when she goes to Los Angeles. When the widowed Annie confronts Chris about her disintegrating family, Mirren strongly manifests Chris' inner conflict: the burning desire to escape her boring Yorkshire life but retain her family, her frustration with Annie's tentativeness.

Walters adds much-needed grace and gravity as Annie quietly, realistically expresses to the disapproving Institute president, Marie (Geraldine James), that her grief won't subside with the calendar's publication. But she intimates that the empowering act of participating in the project will assuage the overwhelming feelings of helplessness she felt as her husband was dying, and her desperate need to do something.

The rest of the accomplished female cast, including Linda Bassett, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie and Penelope Wilton, are slotted into assigned British roles--respectively: working-class mother, old money, Sloane Ranger and Monty Pythonesque, frumpy housewife. While the filmmakers deserve praise for providing these mature actresses with work, they fail to give them worthy roles as Nancy Meyers did (for Diane Keaton and Frances McDormand) in Something's Gotta Give. As for supporting males John Alderton, Philip Glenister and Ciarán Hinds, they are basically nonentities.

Regardless of whether Calendar Girls beats The Full Monty to win the Best British Nudity Oscar, the success of past ventures suggests the trend of mainstream British comedies portraying English cultural identity through American eyes will likely continue. Fair warning, filmgoers.