Eugene Weekly : Movie Review : 12.07.06

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Serial Mum

A trunk full of memories

BY MOLLY TEMPLETON

KEEPING MUM: Directed by Niall Johnson. Written by Richard Russo and Niall Johnson. Starring Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rowan Atkinson and Patrick Swayze. Think Film, 2006. R. 103 minutes.

If, in the midst of this foggy Oregon December, you feel yourself yearning for a bit of British countryside, then by all means get yourself to the theater for Keeping Mum. Set in the quaintly named town of Little Wallop (population 57), this slight, silly film has all the hallmarks of a certain sort of small-town British comedy of errors. The visiting American golf instructor (Patrick Swayze, a scary shade of tan) is named Lance and wears getups so hideous they're spot on; people put the kettle on at the faintest sign of any sort of trouble; the oddest scenarios are dealt with politely, if unconventionally. But despite universally solid performances, Keeping Mum earns only a sort of forced chuckle, falling far short of full laughs.

But to each his own: The posters on IMDb.com's comment boards would have you know that anyone who doesn't find Keeping Mum hysterical is an ignorant, uncultured buffoon, accustomed to American slapstick rather than British cleverness. But the humor in director Niall Johnson's film (written by the director and author Richard Russo, who originally set the story in America) is so broad and so clearly telegraphed that it feels as if the punchlines are revealed before the jokes (did you catch that close-up on the iron? Are you sure?). And so, for that matter, is the plot: When sweet, picked on, Hobbity Petey (Toby Parkes) drags his feet on the way to school, he asks his gorgeous mother, Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas, wearing very little makeup in an attempt to look plain), to tell him about when she was a girl — conveniently allowing her to remind him (and confirm for the almost-certain audience) that she was an orphan raised by nuns, a plot point of some significance, if little surprise.

Gloria, her vicar husband, Walter (Rowan Atkinson), and their children have a host of familial issues: She's having an affair because she's not "getting any" at home; Petey's beset by nasty schoolmates; 17-year-old Holly (Tamsin Egerton) goes through sex-toy boyfriends seemingly by the day. Everything changes when kind, observant Grace Hawkins (Maggie Smith) arrives. The neighbor's annoying dog stops barking! The schoolboy troublemakers get theirs! Walter learns to loosen up and even to find something sexy in the Bible. But Grace has her own issues, one of which takes the form of a large trunk that looks awfully like the one in the film's 43-years-ago prologue, in which a sultry, pregnant blonde is arrested and locked up for the murder of her husband and his mistress.

The sweet woman tells Holly the trunk contains "A lifetime of memories, dear." Grace, though her moral compass points somewhere far off the map, is the sort of English grandmother who calls everyone dear and purses her lips just so, so that she needn't say anything; her points are made. And Maggie Smith — Dame Maggie Smith, who could probably do this in her sleep — inhabits the batty old lady charmingly. She's an astonishing actress, and she brings out the best in her talented co-stars. But even Smith's astronomical talents can do only so much for the film, which reaches for dark comedy but lands instead in an odd territory, somewhere light and fluffy but also dryly morbid. For a diversion — or a reminder that most of us are spared the burden of murderous housekeepers, no matter how well they cook — you could do worse, but you could also do much better.