Calendar Girls ****½ (2003, Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie) – Classic Movie Review 1959

Keep a date with Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Linda Bassett as the real-life Yorkshire Women’s Institute ladies who — oh so demurely! — go the full monty for a cancer charity calendar to pay for a hospital ward.

You’ll laugh as the old girls get naked in front of a male photographer. You’ll cry as Walters’s hubby John Alderton dies of cancer. You’ll cheer as the ladies fight the snooty powers-that-be in the WI. And you’ll be amazed as they go on to fame as TV stars in the States.

Alas, there are slight script problems with director Nigel Cole’s 2003 crowd-pleasing comedy drama triumph. Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth‘s screenplay doesn’t seem to know what to do with the key characters of Mirren’s shocked husband (Ciarân Hinds) and troubled son. And it does get unwieldy and less amusing as the old girls go off to America, pursuing their leap to sudden stardom. But the discussion that adds on the nature and cost of fame takes it up a notch as intelligent drama, adding grit to it.

Patrick Doyle’s music and Ashley Rowe’s photography are on the cosy and old-fashioned side, giving it an unnecessarily out-of-date feel, but, still, much of the comedy is in the old Ealing studios class. Though not quite the classic it aspires to be, this is still a red-letter day on the film calendar and is the kind of funny, touching British movie that only comes round every leap year. Mirren, Walters, Crosbie and Imrie, especially, will make your day.

Geraldine James gets the unsympathetic part of Marie, the strict local WI president, derided by the others. Angus Barnett, George Costigan, Graham Crowden, Angela Curran, Georgie Glen, Philip Glenister, John Fortune and Jay Leno also appear.

In real life, Mirren’s brother was dying of cancer during the making of the film. She heard he had died on the day they filmed the funeral scenes.

The same team went on to make Made in Dagenham in 2010.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1959

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/