Keeping Mum
Introduction: This British comedy has a to-die-for cast and a fun premise, but what did they do with it? They squandered it with uneven direction, boring cinematography and no bite whatsoever. Plot Overview: More than 40 years ago, a pregnant woman was sent to a mental asylum for the criminally insane after she murdered her husband and the woman he was having an affair with. And now, the woman is on the loose again --- a psycho-killer in the form of the kindly old Maggie Smith who looks no more menacing than the Queen of England. She finds work as a housekeeper in a tiny village called Little Wollop tending to the home of a busy vicar (Rowan Atkinson) and his ignored wife (Kirstin Scott Thomas). Their daughter (Tasmin Egerton) literally has a new boyfriend every week and their son (Toby Parkes) is getting bullied. The wife is having an affair with an American golf instructor (Patrick Swayze), and they're seriously thinking about running off together. The vicar is quite shy and boring, and he's worried about speaking at a seminar soon. And the sweet old lady walks into their lives. A sweet old lady is all they believe her to be until a few people and a noisy dog turn up missing........... Commentary: The idea was to make Maggie Smith's character come off as sweet on the outside but pure evil within. The filmmakers had the obligatory scene in which she holds up a butcher's chopper and the camera moves to a more omnimous angle. However, this movie is played more like a comedy.There's nothing wrong with the lighthearted treatment of dark subject matter --- this is a black comedy after all. But it all seemed rather feeble. I should have been at least slightly frightened by Smith's character. I mean, there's the novelty of seeing her hitting someone on the back of the head with an iron, but even that was cut-rate compared to scenes in similar movies such as Serial Mom and Misery. Another crippling flaw was that the characters are supposed to have undergone personal transformation because this psycho killer happened upon their lives. Smith's character sees this family in disarray, and she uses her wisdom to fix the dysfunction while killing people behind their back. It's a funny idea, but one that wasn't executed well. The character transformations are carried out flatly, and watching the granny kill people isn't nearly as funny as it could have been. It's nice that these filmmakers managed to land such a nice cast. Maggie Smith is always nice to see, and Rowan Atkinson is usually quite fun. The characters were allegedly meant to be bright and quirky, but it didn't quite work. That's disappointing, because the actors did a nice enough job making the characters interesting. The cinematography was quite boring, and script didn't have a whole not of good jokes. There was a plot twist at the end, but it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who was paying attention. Fortunately, this was more of a character-driven film. Conclusion: All in all, this black comedy fails because it lacks bite. However, the likable cast salvages what little the script and director had to offer them. Date reviewed: April 7, 2007 FINAL SCORE: C-
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