This is only the second movie I’ve reviewed in the popular (in my own mind) "Why, Erica, Why?" Summer Movie Library series.How are we already 2 for 2 in movies that feature British senior citizen nudity?!
So many questions here: Why did Erica decide these would be the first two movies she’d bring home for us to watch? Is "British Senior Citizen Nudity" now as popular a classification as "Comedy" or "Drama"? (If it’s not, would you like it to be?) How long until the U.S. decides to launch its own inevitably inferior remake, "American Senior Citizen Nudity"? (We love to steal, I mean adapt, British programming.) Finally, the most important question of all - why, Erica, why?
Fortunately, we’re also 2 for 2 in good movies.
"Calendar Girls" is a fact-based dramedy about a group from the Rylstone Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire, England, who decide to do something a little more unconventional for their annual (and often-boring) calendar - they decide to pose nude.
Their motives - like this movie - are surprisingly modest: the women wanted to raise the money to help one of its members (Annie Clarke, played by Julie Walters) buy a couch for the family waiting room in the hospital where her husband John died of leukemia. John always said that "the flowers of Yorkshire were like the women of Yorkshire - the last phase was always the most glorious", and the women set out to prove that point.
Oscar winner Helen Mirren stars as Chris Harper, the free spirit who ends up being the driving force that puts the calendar together. Mirren gives a very good, light performance, but there’s one problem: Helen Mirren is hot! I thought part of the point was that these women were supposed to be people we don’t necessarily want to see naked in a calendar. Do we think that a Helen Mirren calendar wouldn’t become a best-seller?
Other than that, I appreciated the relatively understated way the movie handled the rest of the group. There’s a natural, initial hesitation from some of the ladies, but the movie doesn’t waste too much time on the "will they or won’t they" question. Even the recreations of the calendar shots (I’m assuming they’re recreations since I haven’t seen the actual calendar) are handled in a tasteful, entertaining way. The best thing the movie has going for it is that it’s a funny movie without ever making fun of these women.
In fact, I’d say the movie is almost understated to a fault. On one hand, I appreciate the movie for mostly avoiding the predictable clichés a movie like this could easily bring (Chris’ husband, for example, is actually supportive and proud of his wife, when he could’ve just as easily been jealous and tried to stop her). On the other hand, that doesn’t make for a terribly dramatic or exciting story. The worse thing that happens is Chris’ head gets too big when the Calendar Girls threaten to go Hollywood. I’ll usually take a realistic, understated plotline over manufactured drama. (Though the movie DOES manufacture a bit of drama in portraying the Women’s Institute as not being supportive initially, when in real life they were sympathetic from the beginning.)
Actually, most of the dramatic heft is placed on Penelope Wilton, who plays Ruth - the one Women’s Institute member who DOES have a jerky unsupportive husband. Other than that, we don’t get to know too much about the ladies beyond the fact that one of them has a tattoo, suggesting a surprisingly wild past. In my opinion, this is what really places "Calendar Girls" a peg below "The Full Monty", in which almost every main character had significant development.
I generally try not to compare one movie to another when I do my reviews, but "Calendar Girls" does kind of have the reputation of being the female "Full Monty." I’d say "Monty" was even more of an ensemble piece than "Calendar Girls", which really focuses on Mirren and Walters’ characters.
More importantly, both are good movies, despite the fact that the characters in "Monty" are mostly too young and too male to make the cut in the WEW series.
Calendar Girls...B+
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