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Rating:  - Nostalgia
This is a fairly entertaining HBO film, worthy especially because of Judi Dench, who gives yet another first class performance. But the script is extraordinarily superficial, and its moral overtone is tedious: all that matters in life is to be young and have sex. The Christian in the film is considered a loony. While the Olympia Dukakis character, a many times married drunk, is just a heck of a lot of fun. And so on. The flashbacks to the 1940s are not at all persuasive, especially the makeup. And the sound that tiny band produces is made in fact by a much larger group. The actors do pretty well at pretending to be musicians, with the notable exception of Leslie Caron. Cleo Laine's presence in the film is gratuitous, and the camera should have avoided closeups. In short, here is a happy, silly, predictable, narcissistic flick worthy of HBO. Still, Judi Dench is something to behold.
Rating:  - Great coming of Third Age tale
What do you do after your husband of many years dies? Elizabeth (Dench) went to the library twice a week, babysat her granddaughter and that was life enough--til she heard a street busker and took her clandestine saxophone practice to the streets.
Her grand-daughter encourages Elizabeth to re-form her old swing band, "The Blonde Bombshells" for her school dance. That takes some effort--a couple are dead, one's crazy, one's joined the Salvation Army...
But nothing can stop Elizabeth when she's set her mind to something. The resulting story is witty, winning and well worth owning. This film would make a great gift for any woman or man who's entering the third age and looking for some inspiration.
Rating:  - Good TV movie made with only modest aspirations
This is a pleasant little movie about a bunch of septuagenarians having a graceful last fling--or perhaps beginning a series of graceful last flings. It is a sort of roll call for some great old girls, ballasted by the presence of Ian Holm, playing a transvestite part at second hand. (Don't ask.) It offers some good forties-style big band numbers and a couple of fine Cleo Laine songs. And if Laine's musical style happens to be incorrect for the intended period, who really cares?
This is a TV movie made without high goals.
It could and should have been better. The whole thing, rebuilding the band to the contrary, is conceived as a long dying fall. The Blonde Bombshells are a band destined to go gentle into that good night. No raging against the loss of light for them. Both the script and the direction avoid triumph. At the climax, where there might just as easily have been a YEAH! moment, there is only a wistful smile and a vision of things past.
This is true not only of the script but of the musical score. In the end, as was inevitable from the first frame of this picture, the reconstituted Blonde Bombshells get the joint jumping with a swinging tune. Having attained that high point, it is immediately squelched by the following wistfully downbeat number. Reverse those two and the audience would be dancing around the screen.
Solid, well-acted, some good music, certainly entertaining--but a movie that sets its sights a little too low.
Four stars.
DVD STUFF: There are no bells and whistles. You pay your penny and you get your movie. That's all.
A TRIFLING OBSERVATION: Leslie Caron must have one heck of a manager. I'd be surprised if she had as many as half a dozen lines, but she has third billing in the credits.
Rating: - Fancy a bit of fun, Dearie?
Some moviies lie buried under the latest box office statistics and smothered by the youth-fixated executives that run the business - but the DVD and VCR make it possible for you to dig them up and appreciate them for the treasures they are. This is one of them - an enjoyable film about grownups who find pleasures in life - making music and finding old friends, and sharing their best with their children. Actually, their grandchildren, since the children are often stuffy about what their parents are really like. Certainly, Dame Judi's are scandalized when she whips out her old saxaphone and starts blowing on street corners with a street musician. Not all of her audience is unappreciative: she gets a note from Ian Holm that says "Fancy a bit of fun, dearie?"
Well, do you? There's more than a bit of fun to be had here, especially when Olympia Dukakis blows that trumpet. And wait till you see Leslie Caron on a bull fiddle!
Rating: - If you are into sweet nostalgia
It has a nice story of a grandmother who played in WW2 in an all-girl band and decides today to get the group back for a schoolchildren concert. She finds opposition from her children but her grand-daughter pushes her on. In parts, I thought the story could have used a little more work still it was reasonable.
The acting was good.
If you are into these sort of stories it is watchable.
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