BLITHE SPIRIT | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Edward Hall (12A, 95 mins)
A reworking of Noël Coward’s famous play about a séance gone wrong, this has been adapted for the screen several times before. Originally performed on stage in 1941, it concerns the farcical goings on when spiritualist Madame Arcati – played here by Judi Dench – attempts to commune with the other side for Dan Stevens’ writer Charles Condomine. He’s suffering from writers’ block and impotence in the wake of a new marriage to Isla Fisher’s Ruth, still haunted by the memory of his first wife: glamorous film actress Elvira, played by Leslie Mann.
The séance is initially instigated to try and find a way into his Hollywood debut screenplay, funded by Fisher’s wealthy father (Simon Kunz). It only brings Elvira back from the other side, however, and she proceeds to torment her old husband as well as helping him with his screenplay, as it transpires that she was the real brains behind all his literary achievements.
Despite the best intentions of all involved, this is a rather joyless mess. Dench is muted as Arcati, an extravagant fake spiritualist with noble intentions to contact her own dearly departed but not above stage trickery to paying crowds. Her charlatanism is never clear, and the veracity of her beliefs are there to suit the screenplay when it pleases. Stevens and Fisher exude a screwball energy but have little in the way of actual jokes, and there’s a streak of misogyny that discomforts, despite a belated feminist agenda. Mann is forced to bounce between love for her husband, jealousy and vengeance with little or no reason and, the whole film feels quite leaden when it ought to be light on its feet.
A far from sparkling comedy, Blithe Spirit wastes its cast and source material with this ungainly and unnecessary retread.
Out now on Sky Cinema. Info: here
words KEIRON SELF
