Maggie Smith
Jean Horton
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Cissy, Reggie, and Wilf are in a home for retired musicians. Every year, there is a concert to celebrate Composer Giuseppe Verdi's birthday and they take part. Jean, who used to be married to Reggie, arrives at the home and disrupts their equilibrium. She still acts like a diva, but she refuses to sing. Still, the show must go on, and it does.
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| Release Date | 2012-12-26 |
|---|---|
| Runtime | 1h 38m |
| Directors | Dustin Hoffman, John de Borman |
| Producers | Finola Dwyer, Dario Suter, Stewart Mackinnon, Dustin Hoffman, Marc Schmidheiny, Xavier Marchand, Dickon Stainer, Jamie Laurenson, Thorsten Schumacher, Christoph Daniel |
| Writers | Ronald Harwood, Ronald Harwood |
Four friends decide to work together to put on a concert to raise money to prevent the retirement home/orphanage/local theater/etc. from closing down. We haven’t seen this before, have we? Still, based on the high powered cast they assembled here, I had hopes for it. Hope is a beautiful thing.
So I was disappointed. The Billy Connolly character seemed first two-dimensional to me and was barely carried off by the comedian;’s natural charm and winning smile. The Cedrick character felt over the top and didn’t add much to the film despite a strong enough performance by the actor.
I think the plot and the script let them down, but they soldiered on and made the best of it. Billy Connolly’s character was ironically at his best when he was serious rather than flirting and pushing peoples’ buttons. Pauline Collins managed to be amusing while suffering from bouts of dementia. There were fine moments throughout the movie and the chemistry between the main characters, but it didn’t quite overcome for me the staleness of the plot and lack of depth in a few of the characters.
Asa side note, there is a nice gesture during the credits as they reveal that many of the supporting cast have had music careers of their own with a quick display of their then and now pictures and a brief description of their claim to fame.
— Peter McGinn