At the end of the 1990s, members of the U.K.'s Women's Institute got an idea for helping people with cancer and their families with a calendar featuring themselves in the nude. This was not unprecedented; sports teams and others have been known to run similar fund-raisers, but the twist here was that the WI women were all over 50 years of age. It's a funny enough idea worth thinking about for a moment or two before the phone rings or whatever, but doesn't seem like much of a basis for a movie. And now here's the proof.
The makers of "Calendar Girls" offer another dip in the bottomless Britcom well of small comedies filled with wry chuckles and tender glances designed to make the viewer feel somehow better about themselves, without really getting at the heart of anything. Aren't the British supposed to be our creative superiors? Shakespeare and all that? Many of these movies give me the feeling they're cribbing off old "M*A*S*H" episodes, the nasty later-seasons stuff where Hawkeye turned to the camera at the end and asks us what we learned in class today. These icky self-assertion dramadies work like "Terms Of Endearment," only with Peter Rabbit scenery.
"Calendar Girls" comes off as more crass and manipulative than most, and I found myself resenting the way it delivered its jokes and dramatic moments alike with obvious set-ups and trilly speechifying. The script sometimes manages to develop real tension, only to let it fade away. There's one subplot about one of the Calendar Girls' sons getting in trouble with the law, and another about a philandering husband who cruelly sends his wife on a guilt trip, which are resolved via unsatisfying one-liners and much lingering uncertainty. Helen Mirren's Chris doesn't seem to deal with situations so much as wisecrack her way through them, which might be more interesting if the filmmakers didn't simply ape her approach.
The opening section has charm, and works more than it doesn't. That's when we are introduced to the concept behind the calendar, the dying husband of Annie (Julie Walters), a gardener who writes a speech, delivered by Chris, where he compares the sunflower to the women of Yorkshire, beautiful in every stage of growth, but most glorious at the end. Chris, Annie, and several members of the fusty Women's Institute take his words to heart, and to buy a sofa for a cancer ward's family room, decide to put together a camera with nude photos of themselves representing each month of the year.
The nudity is tasteful, not really all-hang-out but kind of provocative in a way that does credit to the eternal sexiness of a strong woman, whatever her age or her state of body. The scenes are funny, and roll with a certain brave assertiveness that makes one want to join in the laughter even as one hears the unoiled wheels of audience manipulation grinding around you. For the first third of the movie, it works more than it doesn't.
Right after the calendar pictures are shot, though, "Calendar Girls" runs out of steam. So it makes due with a series of contrivances that build on a persistent formula, which operates as follows: The women get their hopes up. A crisis. Disaster! No, wait, it's not a disaster at all. Actually it's something good. It's better than good, it's great! [Note: This is not a spoiler, but it sort of is, as you will find out from watching. This very thing keeps happening over and over again.]
Just when things can't get any worse, they do. The Girls go Hollywood, literally. [Thematically, of course, the film has been there for quite some time.] Now, instead of crises about getting past the fustier Women's Institute members, or finding a bigger pair of buns, we have long scenes devoted to the plushness of their travel accommodations, or meeting friendly neighborhood punk bands by the pool. Chris and Annie bicker over what this is all about to give us some conflict, but not for long. No one worries what the WI makes of having their name dragged around in connection with this fleshy display, since it's all about curing cancer. Cancer seems to serve the same purpose in this film as Vietnam POWs did in "Rambo," as sort of an excuse to justify the movie's every excess, or each character's ambition. You don't like "Calendar Girls?" That must mean you like poor John bald and taking his nourishment through a straw!
I see "Calendar Girls" as a take on two other better films. Everyone mentions "The Full Monty," and correctly, but the film I kept flashing on was "Waking Ned Devine." Two old timers in the country happen upon a scheme to make some money, one more brassy than the other, eventually uniting their quaint pastoral community behind them. One of them even gets naked. [Yes, "Devine" is set in Ireland, but the same rustic whimsical dynamic applies.] The fact both these earlier movies made some money, not to mention the original Calendar Girls themselves, seem more at the heart of what's going on here than solving the problem of cancer, or standing up for the beauty of menopausal women.
By the end, I was waiting for someone to present Annie and Chris with a ready-made cure for leukemia. I guess they couldn't afford a George Clooney walk-on.
The makers of "Calendar Girls" offer another dip in the bottomless Britcom well of small comedies filled with wry chuckles and tender glances designed to make the viewer feel somehow better about themselves, without really getting at the heart of anything. Aren't the British supposed to be our creative superiors? Shakespeare and all that? Many of these movies give me the feeling they're cribbing off old "M*A*S*H" episodes, the nasty later-seasons stuff where Hawkeye turned to the camera at the end and asks us what we learned in class today. These icky self-assertion dramadies work like "Terms Of Endearment," only with Peter Rabbit scenery.
"Calendar Girls" comes off as more crass and manipulative than most, and I found myself resenting the way it delivered its jokes and dramatic moments alike with obvious set-ups and trilly speechifying. The script sometimes manages to develop real tension, only to let it fade away. There's one subplot about one of the Calendar Girls' sons getting in trouble with the law, and another about a philandering husband who cruelly sends his wife on a guilt trip, which are resolved via unsatisfying one-liners and much lingering uncertainty. Helen Mirren's Chris doesn't seem to deal with situations so much as wisecrack her way through them, which might be more interesting if the filmmakers didn't simply ape her approach.
The opening section has charm, and works more than it doesn't. That's when we are introduced to the concept behind the calendar, the dying husband of Annie (Julie Walters), a gardener who writes a speech, delivered by Chris, where he compares the sunflower to the women of Yorkshire, beautiful in every stage of growth, but most glorious at the end. Chris, Annie, and several members of the fusty Women's Institute take his words to heart, and to buy a sofa for a cancer ward's family room, decide to put together a camera with nude photos of themselves representing each month of the year.
The nudity is tasteful, not really all-hang-out but kind of provocative in a way that does credit to the eternal sexiness of a strong woman, whatever her age or her state of body. The scenes are funny, and roll with a certain brave assertiveness that makes one want to join in the laughter even as one hears the unoiled wheels of audience manipulation grinding around you. For the first third of the movie, it works more than it doesn't.
Right after the calendar pictures are shot, though, "Calendar Girls" runs out of steam. So it makes due with a series of contrivances that build on a persistent formula, which operates as follows: The women get their hopes up. A crisis. Disaster! No, wait, it's not a disaster at all. Actually it's something good. It's better than good, it's great! [Note: This is not a spoiler, but it sort of is, as you will find out from watching. This very thing keeps happening over and over again.]
Just when things can't get any worse, they do. The Girls go Hollywood, literally. [Thematically, of course, the film has been there for quite some time.] Now, instead of crises about getting past the fustier Women's Institute members, or finding a bigger pair of buns, we have long scenes devoted to the plushness of their travel accommodations, or meeting friendly neighborhood punk bands by the pool. Chris and Annie bicker over what this is all about to give us some conflict, but not for long. No one worries what the WI makes of having their name dragged around in connection with this fleshy display, since it's all about curing cancer. Cancer seems to serve the same purpose in this film as Vietnam POWs did in "Rambo," as sort of an excuse to justify the movie's every excess, or each character's ambition. You don't like "Calendar Girls?" That must mean you like poor John bald and taking his nourishment through a straw!
I see "Calendar Girls" as a take on two other better films. Everyone mentions "The Full Monty," and correctly, but the film I kept flashing on was "Waking Ned Devine." Two old timers in the country happen upon a scheme to make some money, one more brassy than the other, eventually uniting their quaint pastoral community behind them. One of them even gets naked. [Yes, "Devine" is set in Ireland, but the same rustic whimsical dynamic applies.] The fact both these earlier movies made some money, not to mention the original Calendar Girls themselves, seem more at the heart of what's going on here than solving the problem of cancer, or standing up for the beauty of menopausal women.
By the end, I was waiting for someone to present Annie and Chris with a ready-made cure for leukemia. I guess they couldn't afford a George Clooney walk-on.