3 stars out of 5
Sounds like a horse movie, doesn’t it?
No, it’s a comedic drama, “inspired by true events,” starring Dame Judi Dench and co-writer Steve Coogan. And it was this year’s selection in that annual challenge: What movie to see with the folks on Thanksgiving. And by those standards it was the perfect film, matching the classic 3-out-of-5 rating of Dan in Real Life. In other words, not great, not terrible, not too “edgy,” and at the very least, watchable.
For the first half hour or so, I thought it was even better than that. I was enjoying Dame Judith’s Irish accent, and the flashback scenes to heartless nuns taking away her young son had genuine tearjerker quality. Dench is quite good, gently underplaying the many joke lines that Coogan has provided in the script.
And I’m a big Steve Coogan fan. Maybe here I also connected to the idea of his character reinventing himself as a freelance writer. It seemed like a gentler but also meaner version of Coogan’s beloved TV creation, Alan Partridge. And so we get this likable mismatched pairing, kind-hearted Dench and cynical Coogan, on a road trip from England to Ireland to the United States. There are laughs and sweetness.
Too bad the writing doesn’t hold up. For the screenplay, Coogan was teamed with a British TV “head of factual drama” but they still have a hard time smoothly getting from Point A to B to C. Plot holes are explained away with awkward sentences; characters’ motivations shift at the drop of a hat—it all started to feel a bit convenient and lazy. Meanwhile Coogan has an axe to grind about conservative politics and especially the Catholic church, but it’s too ham-fisted. (And come on, fact-checkers: I know you’re British but an official U.S. website would never refer to our 41st President as “George Bush Senior.” And why is Coogan jogging outside in one scene and driving through snow in the next?)
Just before the end credits, we learn a bit about the real people portrayed here, and it gives Philomena a little more resonance. I almost want to look up the true story on Wikipedia. Maybe if it was 3.5 stars, I would.
Jack Silbert, curator