2/3 good 1/3 bad

ikanboy

I enjoyed the first two thirds of this movie, and hated the last third. Every movie has a message and this one was: Good friends stick together no matter how badly they behave towards others or themselves.

Andie McDowell - in a performance I liked, because she seemed to have dropped her whiny, self satisfied, airs of previous roles - is a headmistress of a private British Public (ergo private) School, who has two close girlfriends who meet and trade "men" stories in order to win chocolate bars as a prize for the best story.

One is a cop, played pluckily, by Imelda Staunton. The other is a Doctor, who is angry, foul mouthed and cynical; and as it turns out: spiteful.

At a funeral Andie runs into an old pupil of hers, some 16 years her junior, who happens to be the Organist. Before the re introductions are barely over they're shagging in the Cemetery. This is the kind of movie this is. Hedonism is King, or is it Queen? She decides that this is a "man" story she'll keep secret from the girls, but it's soon out and they are not pleased. The Doctor seems jealous, while the cop seems concerned by the age, and class difference. Although why a cop should pull the class difference issue is beyond me! ***********************SPOILER***************************** When Andie makes the decision to marry him, the friends pull out all the stops to divert her, to no avail. (At this point I said to my wife: "I bet they (the writers) kill him off). Sure enough the Doctor convinces the cop to have her video her seducing the boyfriend. Andie walks in on the seduction, which unknown to her has failed, and storms out. In the ensuing fight, she kicks him out and he is run over by a truck while sitting in the road trying to put his boots on.

That's the first two thirds, and it's not bad. The lines are often witty, if a little to self consciously so, but it seems as if we are going to attack the May - September love affair issue head on. It is not to be. The message is instead to be about how friends make up after screwing one of their own. Which would be fine if there had been a serious attempt to do so. Instead the serio-comedy goes all comedy, and darkly so! Andie walls herself off from her friends and then in a colossal show of thoughtless dishonesty she sets up the school's vicar to marry her. By this time we have seen her get sick and know she's pregnant and assume she is, perhaps, seeking a "father" for the child through subterfuge. As it turns out Andie has not only become deceitful, she has also become stupid, as she is unaware she is pregnant! The friends decide to intervene again, but this time for a good cause. No matter that Andie has set a man up for an emotional crash, but now her friends add poison to the gruel and have her "arrested" at the altar, by none other than her cop friend and her willing bobbies.

Off they go to the Doctor's office where the pregnancy is revealed and in a quick, unconvincing scene, all is forgiven. A bad taste in the mouth is the ending! People behaving badly and stupidly and learning not a wit from it!

score 6/10

ikanboy 20 August 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1453729/