Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

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source: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

This attempt to recreate a 1930s style screwball comedy is an inoffensive dud. It by no means flops spectacularly, but it might be more fun if it did. Frances McDormand plays the titular Miss Pettigrew, a down-on-her-luck lady who tricks her way into the employ of a ditzy American singer/actress (Amy Adams). It's like a female version of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, but the movie is too lead footed to capture the silly whimsy of those stories. McDormand is always a welcome presence in any film, but knowing what this actress can do just makes you wish she had been given a better role. Adams is good too -- every time I see her in a movie I find myself completely annoyed by her at first and utterly won over by her by the time the movie is over. But in aiming for light-hearted farce, the film leaves both actresses with too little to do. The plot is inconsequential by design, but without any charm or humour to replace it, the film goes nowhere. Grade: C+

Greetings again from the darkness. Something we rarely see these days is an attempt at the screwball comedy that made Cary Grant a mega-star. Disappointingly, TV director Bharat Nalluri doesn't have the chops or script to quite get this one over the hump, despite a terrific cast and authentic look to the film. What's missing is the crackling, fast-paced dialogue that made those films so wonderful. Certainly Frances McDormand as the title character and Amy Adams as her pet project for the day are up to the task ... they are just left hanging without a worthy script. This one is extremely simple and despite its shortcomings, is still cute and easily watchable. So much more could have been done with McDormand's character that we leave the theater feeling the void. I am definitely looking forward to Amy Adams' next two film projects (both with Meryl Streep). It is time she was pushed as an actress. I sense greatness. The supporting cast is excellent with Ciaran Hinds and rising star Lee Pace. The marvelous Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter films) steals every one of her scenes and again, makes us long for what could have been. Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer music are terrific backdrops on the eve of German invasion and the night club scene is beautifully presented. While enjoyable enough to watch, in the end it is just another film that could have been much more.

An aficionado of music and styles of the 30's and 40's, I couldn't wait to see this movie and was ready to love it. So many elements were there - the premise, the characters, flawless casting from the leads to the supporting actors, and evocative and charming look and sound. But for a truly engaging "screwball comedy with a heart" the story and dialogue were often painfully clumsy. Worse, drawn-out mugging by the usually wonderful McDormand and Adams (in supposedly farcical situations) wasn't funny and made the pace positively lurch along, clearly the fault of the direction and editing. By the time there were some enchanting and poignant moments - which only intensified my disappointment over what might have been - the audience seemed frankly bored. They never laughed and filed out at the end with ruefull shrugs. Miss Pettigrew was as pleasant and inoffensive as your great-aunt Mabel, but it should have left everyone wiping a tear while doing a little two-step out the door to the jaunty end-title music. I'm very surprised at the enthusiasm of the majority of the reviewers, but good for them if they enjoyed it.

I see literally hundreds of films from the 30's and I'm sorry. This film does not have what I call the "Ring of Truth". The music jumps from recreations of period music to the real music. I also thought it odd to film in England and use so many, at least what I thought were, American Actors trying to do English Accents. I was not impressed. However, I must tell you, I'm a projectionist in a theatre, and I'm running the last half right now and this is my second day and I am trying to give it a chance. It's very hard to hear all the Dialogue as a Projectionist and so I will rent it some day on DVD and look at it with my wife who is 74 in our living room theatre and see what she thinks.

In 1939, when the book "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" was written, such films were cranked out by the gross. At the very best, they were directed by Howard Hawks, and they flowed along with easy wit and little time for the audience to question any plot weaknesses. At the worst, they were trite potboilers. Alas, this film apes the latter. It trots out every single "screwball romantic comedy" trope from "Dinner at Eight" to "Pillow Talk" without bringing a single new thing to the mix. So much for the plot. Amy Adams plays the equivalent of "Lorelei Lee" (and pastiches Carole Lombard and every other screwball blonde in cinematic history) turned up to eleven. She's madcap! She's ditzy! She just can't say no! Frances McDormand is a capable actress, but she attempts to conceal her faux British accent behind chewing her words, as if she's afraid to be heard clearly. So much for the two leads. With questionable acting, 2-dimensional characters and the flimsiest of all possible plots, the only thing that can save the film would be very deft direction. Alas, even that it lacks. It's always an indication of the weakness of a film when the director throws in "mood-setting music" in every scene. Such is the case here. Need the audience to get excited? Blare the rinky-dink jazz! Need them to try to care about this romance or that? Cue the sobbing strings! Heavy-handed? That doesn't even begin to describe it. There is only one group of people who could find this film appealing: women with a taste for "retro" styling whose cinematic standards have consistently been lowered to the basement floor. Anyone who appreciates sparkling, original romantic comedies will simply find it woefully lacking in every regard.

I'm afraid I found this film toe-curling-lee unfunny. It's just a succession of all the cute characteristics Americans used to attribute to the Briddish about 50 years ago. I think it's probably the director's fault. I mean the cast all did their best. In fact Shirley Henderson ("Moaning Myrtle" in HP2, Miss Mellmott in the BBC The Way We Live Now) managed to do her epitome-of-evil thing quite well. But oh dear, nostalgia costumes and art deco lifts don't make a great film, just as a funny walk is not great comedy. Wow, Delysia tipped the leavings off a dinner plate into the cutlery drawer. Oh how we rolled in the aisles, I don't think. Don't waste your money. Read a PG Wodehouse instead.

I can't believe this film received positive reviews. I was bored silly. This felt like someone's vanity piece; some producer or director who loved '30s era screwball comedies wanted to make one of their own. But it doesn't work. I didn't laugh at all during this movie. Amy Adams' character is flighty and breathless, running around her pad with no idea what she's doing. Neither she, nor her three "lovers" are likable or memorable. McDormand is little more than a neutral character, despite being the title character, because we never get to know her. The film basically takes place over a one-day period and has only three sets: the apartment, a nightclub, and the Savoy Hotel. Everything has to take place in this limited setting, but the plot is too thin and the dialog too weak to be effective. The only times this film has some life are when Hinds and McDormand share screen time alone, with the other totally uninteresting characters off the screen.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is probably meant to be a farce. The shenanigans of a down-and–out middle aged London woman, Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), are rarely funny or pathetic or sympathetic, or ironic, even given the screwball attempts to make humor out of a night on the cusp in 1938 of German invasion. She maneuvers into a social secretary job, just for the titular day as it turns out, and experiences a gamut of emotions and connections contrived enough on paper but flat on the screen. The post-roaring twenties of swinging night clubs is the main setting as Delysia (Amy Adams) wins her way into the hearts of three men while acting like a ditsy Carole Lombard without the wit. As Pettigrew helps her through the shoals, Pettigrew herself struggles with love she fails to see she's worthy of. In a screwball comedy * farce, the lines should be rapid, and the alliances blurry; alas, no such comedy resides here. The attempts are too forced, painful to watch because these A-list talents can't make more out of the script, and director Bharat Nalluri continues to emphasize the ambiance rather than the wit. Make no mistake, the sets and costumes are first-rate, the music seductively referencing the preeminence of jazz even as swing is preparing to usurp the '20's legacy. But it all seems too, too, a De-Lovely knock off without Cole Porter's charm. Frances McDormand deftly portrays the outside, and Amy Adams is comfortable in her magical princess persona. After those fine performances, there's not much left in the day but your admission dollars and a cynical feeling that Miss Pettigrew's day was a loss.