The Half Monty
The partially-nude Calendar Girls, starring Julie Walters and Helen Mirren, is burdened by a fragmented plot, half-formed characters and an appealing premise that peaks too soon. When the older women of Yorkshire, England pose nude for a charity calendar, they cover half their breasts. The cover-up reveals director Nigel Cole's conflicted approach.
When Annie (played by Walters, who gets better with age) loses her husband to leukemia, her best friend Chris (Mirren, one of today's best actresses) tries to transform Annie's loss into something purposeful. The ladies belong to a stuffy English women's club, which offers lectures on gardening and broccoli, and they decide to finally put the association to some practical use.
Their friendship is warm and deep, and the movie is at its best depicting their struggle to honor Annie's dead husband by defying British traditionalism. If the script had emphasized the calendar's production as the conflict—there are numerous obstacles, including the club's prissy president (Geraldine James)—Calendar Girls might have been a rich and humorous widow's tale.
Well into the movie, as Annie and Chris rush to defend the calendar, both ladies deliver moving speeches, with Annie expressing genuine grief and Chris delivering an angry condemnation of the mundane. The climactic scene, as they stand before hundreds of women, is a poignant, if veiled, call to reclaim one's proper purpose, happiness.
But Cole seems unsure of his direction, and the script doesn't help. The movie veers wildly from repressed calendar women, who won't be seen nude in front of the photographer (an excellent role for Philip Glenister), to families, politics, tabloid journalism and, finally, Hollywood, where an appearance by Jay Leno as himself promptly pronounces the plot fully exhausted. (Mr. Leno's self promotion in movies is ridiculously indiscriminate.)
Chris goes Hollywood while Annie becomes a martyr, and key plot points are abandoned, notably the story of the photographer—who is both the calendar's fountainhead and a medical professional who cared for Annie's husband, a potential integration that is wasted.
There's a lovely thread that a woman's femininity flourishes later in life. It's a graceful arc that begins with Annie's cancer-stricken John (John Alderton) and ends with color and elegance. But the thread is tattered with long deviations from the theme, scenes—especially those between John and Annie—which are too short, and a subplot about a pitiful wife. Much of the material is funny or interesting. None of it is truly let loose.
Comparisons to the hilarious comedy about masculinity, The Full Monty, are inevitable, but that movie tested each man's character by making the striptease an act of personal liberation. Monty's lady counterparts lack the crucial connection between body and soul.
Three years ago, Cole directed his first feature, the charming Saving Grace, a pleasant, topical picture and, with Calendar Girls, Cole rightly attempts a wider scope. But, as the faulty title suggests, he winds up with a string of halfway stories that coyly conceals its best qualities.
When Annie (played by Walters, who gets better with age) loses her husband to leukemia, her best friend Chris (Mirren, one of today's best actresses) tries to transform Annie's loss into something purposeful. The ladies belong to a stuffy English women's club, which offers lectures on gardening and broccoli, and they decide to finally put the association to some practical use.
Their friendship is warm and deep, and the movie is at its best depicting their struggle to honor Annie's dead husband by defying British traditionalism. If the script had emphasized the calendar's production as the conflict—there are numerous obstacles, including the club's prissy president (Geraldine James)—Calendar Girls might have been a rich and humorous widow's tale.
Well into the movie, as Annie and Chris rush to defend the calendar, both ladies deliver moving speeches, with Annie expressing genuine grief and Chris delivering an angry condemnation of the mundane. The climactic scene, as they stand before hundreds of women, is a poignant, if veiled, call to reclaim one's proper purpose, happiness.
But Cole seems unsure of his direction, and the script doesn't help. The movie veers wildly from repressed calendar women, who won't be seen nude in front of the photographer (an excellent role for Philip Glenister), to families, politics, tabloid journalism and, finally, Hollywood, where an appearance by Jay Leno as himself promptly pronounces the plot fully exhausted. (Mr. Leno's self promotion in movies is ridiculously indiscriminate.)
Chris goes Hollywood while Annie becomes a martyr, and key plot points are abandoned, notably the story of the photographer—who is both the calendar's fountainhead and a medical professional who cared for Annie's husband, a potential integration that is wasted.
There's a lovely thread that a woman's femininity flourishes later in life. It's a graceful arc that begins with Annie's cancer-stricken John (John Alderton) and ends with color and elegance. But the thread is tattered with long deviations from the theme, scenes—especially those between John and Annie—which are too short, and a subplot about a pitiful wife. Much of the material is funny or interesting. None of it is truly let loose.
Comparisons to the hilarious comedy about masculinity, The Full Monty, are inevitable, but that movie tested each man's character by making the striptease an act of personal liberation. Monty's lady counterparts lack the crucial connection between body and soul.
Three years ago, Cole directed his first feature, the charming Saving Grace, a pleasant, topical picture and, with Calendar Girls, Cole rightly attempts a wider scope. But, as the faulty title suggests, he winds up with a string of halfway stories that coyly conceals its best qualities.
