BEFORE: Judi Dench carries over again from "Red Joan" - and an increasingly-rare Birthday SHOUT-out to actor James Cosmo, who turned 74 on May 24. If I'd noticed this sooner, I would have switched around this film and "Red Joan" - but it's OK, I started watching this film late on May 24, so it counts, the birthday wishes still apply.
It's still World War II appreciation week, leading up to Memorial Day.
THE PLOT: A woman tries to reunite the swing band she played with during World War II.
AFTER: This is an adorable-enough comedy about people in their golden years, how they may choose to spend their time after they've outlived their spouses. They can travel, look up old friends, maybe even get the band back together, even if that band was a swing band from the 1940's and they haven't seen the other band members in 50 years. This is true in any decade - one the band breaks up, regardless of the reason (but come on, it's always because of who slept with who) it's very, very difficult to get the band back together. That's why the Rolling Stones never stopped touring, and perhaps never will - they looked at the Beatles, who famously broke up in 1970 and never got back together and said, "Well, we'll just keep going then..."
Sure, some bands take breaks to work on solo projects, but fifty years? That's some break. Elizabeth, the saxophone player, hears a guitarist on the street playing "Stardust" and decides to join him twice a week, letting him keep the money as long as he buys her a few drinks. It's not like that, she's got money, and she's not an alcoholic, and the guitarist is much too young for her, she's just doing it for fun. But then one day she's spotted by Patrick, who played drums in that all-girl band back during wartime. Wait, what? Yes, he dressed in drag, for reasons we find out later - at first we think it's just because the band needed a drummer, because as we all know, no woman ever played the drums until the Runaways and the Go-Gos came along, I think it was illegal or something.
It turns out Patrick was hiding out so he wouldn't be drafted into the army - it makes sense except that he wasn't really fooling anyone, he didn't really have the legs for it, plus he continued to use the men's room. Big mistake - and one that eventually blew his cover, and kind of broke up the band, because female drummers didn't exist. This is a bit of a NITPICK POINT here, because as soon as the stage manager at the BBC realizes the drummer is a dude that looks like a lady, Patrick's rounded up by MPs, because the only logical assumption is that he's a draft dodger. There could be other reasons why a man is pulling a "Some Like It Hot" routine - he could be unfit for military service, physically or mentally. In fact, the fact that he was a man wearing a dress could be a sign he wasn't military material, if you know what I mean.
But leading up to that, Patrick managed to score with nearly every girl in the band - except, of course, for Elizabeth, because she was underage. Oh, great, he's a lothario and a dirty dog and a sex fiend, but at least he's not a cradle-robber. But after meeting him again, Elizabeth gets the crazy idea to track down the other band members - Patrick seems to know where several of them are, casually saying, "Ah, yes, Gwen was my second wife..." which should have been a tip-off right there. You can't really blame Patrick for playing the field, it was a different time back then, plus, most of the men were off fighting in the war, so you can't really blame him for taking advantage of that. Even if you view this through a modern lens, it's still not really THAT bad, I mean, all those women chose to sleep with him of their own free will, even if he was dating three or four of them at a time and he was lying to them, they believed his lies, and if they regret the relationship, then they should have used better judgment. My point is, you can't have it both ways, ladies, you can't celebrate the women having sexual freedom while also chastising men for the same exact thing.
Anyway, the search does not go well at first - they find out this band member died, that one's got dementia and is in a "care home" (aka nursing home), and that one's in prison. Huh, they still had debtor's prison in the UK in the 1990's? Annie found Jesus and is playing trombone for the Salvation Army, Betty's down in Wolverhampton playing piano at a seaside resort, and Gwen's actually a famous singer, she's ready to join the band without any rehearsal, in fact she prefers it that way. They decide to rehearse together again and plan to play at Elizabeth's school dance in about a month. Meanwhile Elizabeth and Patrick are growing closer together, despite the obvious warning signs that Patrick was married to at least two band members and apparently slept with (almost) all of them. Can he "complete the set" and sleep with Elizabeth before she figures out what a bastard he is?
They drive up to Scotland to find Dinah, the trumpet player, who can't play drunk and can't play sober, but if she hits that sweet spot in between, look out, she's great. And then I think Elizabeth's granddaughter uses this new-fangled thing called the internet to find Madeleine, the bass player, in France. Though this might have been pre-internet, and pre-chunnel and pre-Brexit too. This film was released in 2000, and that's 55 years after the end of World War II - so yeah, I'll allow it because anybody who was 20 in 1945 would then be 75. But you couldn't make this film NOW, for sure. Are there even any World War II veterans left? OK, Wikipedia says there are still about 240,000 World War II vets alive in the U.S., out of the 16 million Americans who served. Something to think about as we head into Memorial Day weekend...
It's a short one tonight - just one hour and 23 minutes long. I think this was a TV movie, made for the BBC, so once you factor in adverts (commercials) that probably brought it up to two hours even. Just be advised that you may see a lot of Judi Dench pretending to play the saxophone, Olivia Dukakis pretending to play the trumpet (they both sold it pretty well) and references to old people having sex, and not just in flashback. Props to the casting department who had to find two actors to play each and every member of the band, one for the 1940's scenes and another for the 1990's scenes, and the resemblance had to be there, or it just wouldn't be believable.
But N.P. #2 - would you recognize someone you haven't seen in fifty years? There's probably a big difference between how everyone looks at age 20 from how they look at 70. Do we believe that Patrick would recognize Elizabeth playing saxophone on the street, if he hadn't seen her since 1940 or so? I think it's more likely that he recognized her saxophone, assuming it was the same one.
Also starring Ian Holm (last seen in "Lord of War"), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Daddy Long Legs"), Olympia Dukakis, Cleo Laine, Joan Sims, Billie Whitelaw (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), June Whitfield, Thelma Ruby, Millie Findlay, Felicity Dean, Nicholas Palliser, Valentine Pelka (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Carla MacKinnon, Dom Chapman, John Warnaby, James Cosmo (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Romola Garai (last seen in "Atonement"), Saskia Vale, Grant Ibbs, Ria-Belinda Mundell, Patricia Valentine, Laura Crossley, Lucy Voller, Kate Maberly (last seen in "Like Minds"), Clemency Burton-Hill, Lucy Pawlby, Harry Jones, Peter Youngblood Hills, Kathryn Pogson (last seen in "Millions").
RATING: 6 out of 10 borrowed used cars
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