St. Trinian’s
Starring: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Gemma Arterton
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0964587/
This review contains spoilers, though not ones that detract from the comedy.
The poster for this movie is utter trash and I’m very glad I didn’t see it before watching the film. otherwise I may have passed it right by. It looks like one of those “Bratz” movies which is so far from a good thing, and yet the movie itself is great. I’ll file this movie away with “Debs” in my “Movies aimed at young girls that I’ve oddly really enjoyed” movie section. This also marks the first movie I have seen with Gemma Arterton since hearing the news that she was playing a lead in Quantum of Solace (the new bond movie that sounds like bad sci-fi, for those who don’t follow movie news), and I am impressed.
This may sound weird, and it is not something that I say often at all, but one of the things I liked most about this movie was the costumes. Whoever designed them did an amazing job. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the rest of it.
I found the almost the entire movie to be hilarious. I laughed a lot and enjoyed myself more than I have normally while watching movies these past few months. There were only three things I did not like about this movie as far as the writing/directing goes, though two of them are probably more of a preference. The first, and this may not be the case for everyone, was that I absolutely could not stand either of Rupert Everett’s characters. The Dad was annoying and the Headmistress was… well not funny at all. This is a problem because I can only assume that the reasoning behind casting a man as a woman was for comedic value and when there is none, it sort of backfires. The movie would have been much better with an actual woman in that role.
The next thing is sort of small and probably did not bother many people, but I was not a fan of the pretty much nonexistent security measures in the museum where the climax occurs. Sure there was a couple of guards, and a maze of lasers which were there only so the characters could perform some style of interpretive dance but that was it! There wasn’t even an alarm when a painting was lifted off the wall. I realize that it is a comedy and not a heist movie and you need to suspend some disbelief but that was just ridiculous.
The last, and worst of the problems I had with the film was also the one that is not so much a preference. At one point in the movie there is a makeover scene. I’m not against these sorts of things, though they aren’t anywhere near my top scenes to watch. However this one felt tacked on randomly. It happened right in the middle of a “build-up” and ended up breaking the pacing of the movie and it felt out of place. It was as if the writer had this great idea for a makeover scene, which the director didn’t want to cut entirely (which makes me feel that either the writer or the director has some background in costume design since it only added to the feeling that this whole movie was made to show off the costumes) but there was no where in the film that it really worked. So they ended up just throwing the scene in haphazardly, and it didn’t work.
This review is already pretty long and I should be wrapping up but I just wanted to mention three things. First, as much as I hate Mischa Barton, she wasn’t half bad in this movie, even though her accent was not great. Of course her “not half bad” is not amazing but at least she didn’t drag the movie down. Secondly, Russel Brand is amazing and after seeing him in this role I am even more excited to see “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. The guy is a genius in comedy. And finally, and this is not as huge as it should be considering it is last in the list, I really love the accents in this film. It’s sort of small and I’m guessing it isn’t something most people would think about but I really liked them.
I would recommend watching this movie if you want a great light comedy, or if the idea of “Hogwarts for pikeys” sounds amazing (which to me it does).
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