#21: DOWNTON ABBEY: THE NEXT GENERATION

 

Starring Hugh Bourneville, Elizabeth mcGovern, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Kevin Doyle, Michael Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Robert James-Collier, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sue Johnston, Allen Leech, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Lesley Nicoll, Dominic West, Imelda Stauton, Penelope Wilton, Jonathon Zaccai. Written by Julian Fellowes, directed by Simon Curtis. 125 minutes of your life.

There's a great British tradition, stretching right back to 1961 with the release of the movie version of 'The Army Game' of adapting popular sitcoms into movies and transporting the loveable cast, via a holiday scenario, to a location overseas. And so comes the latest effort, Downtown Abby. Although be warned, we never meet Abby, nor do we discover where Uptown is.

The 'plot' sees a group of toffs discover that some rich French idiot had died leaving a fabulous villa to the matriarch of the family (Maggie Smith). So Hugh Bourneville and some others all sod off to the South of France to fleece the idiot. Meanwhile, a film company arrives at Downton Abbey to film a movie and the rest of family who stayed behind, help set up the first ever talking movie in the UK and then proceed to fleece the movie company, just so they can repair the roof. And that is the entire extent of the movie's plot. 

Having NEVER EVER watched a single episode of Downton Abbey before in my life, I have absolutely no idea who any of these characters were, or if they even had names. However, I was able to ascertain that one half of the characters were the indentured slaves of the other, who were a bunch of over-privileged, opinionated and disgustingly wealthy crypto-fascists. Thus I was confident that by the end of this cinematic excuse for entertainment, the workers would rise up and butcher these disgusting money-grabbing scum bags in one glorious scene of class retribution. 

Well, dear reader, let me tell you that nothing of the sort occurred! Indeed, rather than rise up and smash the yoke of their tyranical masters before grabbing the means of production, the workers just merrily doffed their collective caps, or curtsied, and thanked them for allowing them to live out their lives fulfilling their master's every whim or desire without complaint until, I'm assuming, in old age, they would be finally lead out to behind the potting shed and executed with a cattle gun. 

I went to this, not because I liked the trailer. I did not, but for something different to watch, something outside my comfort zone. Talking of the trailer, there's one scene that is totally different in the final film. in the trailer, the Butler (Jim Carter) smugly announces to some woman he's walking out of a church with, I don't know who she was, that the French had better watch out because the "English are coming."

However, in the finished the film the scene plays out somewhat differently. Now see see the Butler shagging some French maid on a table, it's all very tasteful, but he's holding both her legs up by the ankles. Suddenly he stopped thrusting. The camera cuts to his hot sweaty face, he makes eye contact with viewers and with the most filthy and disgusting grin says "The English are coming." Well, it's how I would have shot it.

This film had no emotional depth, no narrative drive, no challenges and absolutely nothing in the way of dramatic involvement. The entire cast grinned, and talked smugly to each other how wonderful it was to have money and do whatever you wanted, while the other half professed their love for their masters. The direction, was just as smug and self serving, the camera swopping in to show you how wonderful everything was, how majestic. The soundtrack, which never for a single second ceased to catch its breath just carried on, with the musical equivalent of smiling. Self serving and as smug as everything else. The only drama in the entire film occurs when at one point one of the rich ones visits a friend's house to get a will signed and that was the extent of the drama. 

To say I hated this despicable pile of cinematic tripe would be an insult to all those terrible films that I've had to sit through in the past. This was a film with nothing to say except, greed isn't good, landed gentry is. You would need to have watched every episode to have any hope of understanding who everyone was , Don't, like me, go in cold cos there's nothing here for you and you'll be in for 2 hours of smug misery. 

Apparently according to my friends who went with us to see this, I can't give it a score of zero, because 'the costumes' and 'scenery', besides they loved it and told me I was just being deliberately belligerent about it, they'd watched every episode and tried to convince me that it was good, however all I could think was, come the cinematic revolution mate, you'll be first up against the wall. 

Not for me. Give me Upstairs Downstairs any day, or Bertie Woster, Lord Peter Wimsey or even Decline and Fall. But NOT Brideshead, dear god, not Brideshead. 

4/10