Review: The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club is proof that you can assemble as many British acting icons as you want and still be mid. The new Chris Columbus movie – yes, the same Chris Columbus who presided over two Home Alone movies and two Harry Potter movies – is dripping with the Netflix algorithm. However, because Netflix product also usually involves a modicum of entertainment value, it’s not terrible, either. “Mid” is the right word.

In what is clearly designed as the first in a series of movies based on the books by Richard Osman — better get to them quick, though, as some of these actors are in their eighties — Helen Mirren leads a group of senior citizens in a British retirement manor (it’s almost a castle) who solve cold cases when they aren’t doing aquatic aerobics. Retirees played by Sir Ben Kingsley and Pierce Brosnan are her partners in crime, or in solving crimes, and their former leader is now in the hospice wing, her amateur sleuthing days behind her. That leaves one spot open for a newcomer to the community, played by Celia Imrie, whose prior career as a nurse provides an invaluable medical component that their team had been lacking.

Their cold cases are going to warm up considerably when their home is threatened by a developer (David Tennant) with claims to the land and aims of turning it into luxury condos. (The idea is comical at best that this glorious edifice, akin in appearance to Downton Abbey, might be razed under any circumstances.) There’s no crime there, but murder is a crime, and when people related to the potential reuse of the land, on either side of the debate, start turning up dead, the club will partner with a local constable (Naomi Ackie) to get to the bottom of it.

The Thursday Murder Club has two primary deficiencies: the story and the dialogue. Yes those are big ones. The acting is fine, but the direction isn’t, which is not a contradiction with someone like Columbus asking so little of these august thespians, but them giving us more than he asks anyway.

The dialogue would be the most immediately notable flaw, especially since you cringe so quickly when hearing it come out of these mouths. There’s a lot of exposition, a lot of recapping of what’s just occurred, a lot of previewing of what’s about to occur, and a whole heap of explaining the obvious to people who would require no such explanation. This alone might explain the film’s inexplicable march towards the two-hour mark. It’s clearly been written (by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote) for people only half paying attention, which is perhaps all the engagement cynical Netflix executives believe viewers are willing or capable of giving it, or perhaps all they think it deserves. Or maybe the target audience of elder viewers need reminders of what’s happening, because like Jonathan Pryce‘s character, the imminently senile husband of Mirren’s character, they can’t hold details in their head for very long.

To discuss the story problems requires getting more into the specifics of the narrative, but let’s just say there are some leaps in logic and character motivation that prevent the viewer from sleuthing along, which is supposed to be half the fun of a movie like this. Then there’s an actual cold case that forms sort of a bookend to the narrative, but it is neglected for so long and gotten back to so suddenly that it can’t help but feel rushed and tacked on – which shouldn’t be necessary in a two-hour movie.

So why is there anything of value in The Thursday Murder Club? The stars, of course. This is by no means some of their best work, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to conclude that it could be among their last. While each actor here seems to be fighting fit, the youngest is Brosnan at 72, and then you get all the way up to Kingsley at 81. None is going to drop dead tomorrow. But we are at the point where seeing any one of them, even as they are still working as hard and as often as ever, is a thing to cherish, so seeing all of them in one movie just widens our grins. And you can’t really dislike a movie while you’re grinning.

Ideally, at least Mirren will still have more roles where she’ll be nominated for Oscars. But if another four Thursday Murder Club movies is all we get, we’ll take it.

The Thursday Murder Club is currently streaming on Netflix.