Review

Review Date: 18-January-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: 70% Juicy, 30% Junk

Calendar Girls (2003)

If I think of "Calendar Girls" in the months and years to come, I will remember two different films: "Calendar Girls I," the memory of which will make me stop, think of flowers, and smile, and "Calendar Girls II," which will make me crinkle my nose like a whiff of cow manure. This deeply schizophrenic tale from across the pond exceeded all my expectations for drollery and goodheartedness during the first 75 minutes, but the additional 33 minutes I could have entirely lived without.

"Calendar Girls I" recounts the true-life story of best friends Chris (Helen Mirren) and Annie (Julie Walters), who have reached a comfortable middle age in the lovely Yorkshire town of Knapely. Their social circle centers around the local branch of the Women's Institute (WI), a time-honored organization aimed at improving the lives and minds of respectable females. After Annie's husband is diagnosed with leukemia, Chris hatches a scheme to raise money in his name for the hospital: she decides that she and her friends will pose nude for the WI's calendar. This plan meets with resistance of both the prudish and bashful variety, but before too long her enthusiasm spreads to ten other women willing to join her and Annie in the adventure.

Instead of another contrived portrait of quaintness following in the wake of "Waking Ned Devine," "Calendar Girls I" offers a unique charm and self-confidence impossible to resist. It's all in good British fun, to be sure, but the pace is lively, the comic timing is spot on, and the characters are never more or less than they should be. Chris and Annie remain at the heart of the tale while their friends, neighbors, and loved ones swirl around them in a highly amusing state of confusion, admiration, and astonishment. (Philip Glenister temporarily steals the show as the photographer caught between a fear of unnerving nonconformity and an impulse to create a work of art.) The script sensibly keeps the men and boys in the background without promoting an exclusionary message of liberated womanhood; if dropping trou teaches them anything, it's the modest notion that youth doesn't hold exclusive title to beauty, fun, or inspired rebellion. Of course, the filmmakers hedge their bets on the naked-old-broads chuckle by casting the absurdly sexy Mirren and swathing her in a wardrobe of bright colors, a beauty still very much in bloom. But even so, "Calendar Girls I" is a lark of the highest quality, and delightful.

However, when the glare of flashbulbs vanishes and the women re-don their robes, something terrible happens: "Calendar Girls II" begins. I can only imagine why this aberrance was tacked on to a perfectly good movie (the desire to make standard running time and mad cow disease spring to mind). Drama suddenly replaces comedy, blindsiding the frolic with a Big Moral along the lines of Success Corrupts or some such rubbish having nothing to do with all that came before. Chris and Annie's friendship recedes and some of the minor characters take center stage, only we never asked to learn more about them or their dirty laundry. (Nor did we want to leave Yorkshire for Hollywood.) What happened to the enchanting tale of saucy "older" ladies, whose simple lives were nourished by community and wounded by disease? Why introduce the tawdry, the complicated, the irrelevant? The domestic troubles of Chris and her cronies might have made a decent film, but this isn't it, or at least it wasn't for over an hour. The abrupt shift in tone is baffling and unpleasant (and the studio knows it, because none of "Calendar Girls II" appears in the trailer).

So, this will be the one time I encourage you to use an electronic device in a theater. Go and see "Calendar Girls" by all means, but set your watch to beep after an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, leave with a smile on your face and never look back.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.