Our Ladies (2021)

Based on a book, "The Sopranos", by Alan Warner, Our Ladies is a terrific, feel-good, jaunt around Edinburgh in the 1990s, allowing viewers to have fun watching the exploits of a bawdy group of convent schoolgirls. It calls to mind a number of other, equally fine films, from The Trouble With Angels to Heaven Help Us, and more recent Scottish fare like The Angel's Share.

Orla (Tallulah Greive) is held up as an example of the miraculous power of god, thanks to a trip to Lourdes that seems to have helped her recover from leukaemia, but she really wants to test her luck and get one more "miracle" while on a day trip with her school choir to Edinburgh. She is supported in this plan by a group of friends. There's Finnoula (Abigail Lawrie), Chell (Rona Morison), Kylah (Marli Siu), Manda (Sally Messham), and Kay (Eve Austin). Not that these girls are all friends with one another - things change throughout the movie, and Kay starts off very much as the goody-two-shoes outsider of the group - but they're all happy to keep Orla company, and to maybe make their own unforgettable experience while running free through Auld Reekie.

Directed by Michael Caton-Jones, a bit of a veteran with an equal amount of good and bad throughout his filmography, Our Ladies is, in many ways, very standard stuff, which doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It's almost refreshing that the script, co-written by Caton-Jones and Alan Sharp, weaves between predictable, but satisfying, moments and a humour and attitude that keeps us firmly in the 1990s. Updating the source material could have been entirely possible, but it somehow feels all the better for being set when it is, with the girls equally oblivious to how much the entire world will change around them as they are to how much their own lives can change once their schooldays are finished.

Bittersweet in a few different ways, there's a perfect balance of reality and optimism on display here. These characters have seen so many people around them become stuck, and this has given the impression that it's hard to really break away from their home town and make a better life. Thankfully, it's also strengthened their resolve to do just that, and the trip to Edinburgh is both a time to try as many new experiences as possible and a time to dip their toes into a lake of freedom that they hope to swim in for a long time as they move further into full adulthood.

Things are helped massively by the talented cast. Greive is the heart of the film, and she's a lovely, sweet, presence. In contrast, both Siu and Messham play characters who bristle whenever things change at a pace they're not necessarily ready for, one wanting to lead the way and one just not wanting to be left behind. Morison and Austin are very good, handling their different issues in different ways, and Lawrie plays her part well, the character with arguably the most potential to realise her ambitions, without ever coming across as too patronising or smug. You also get a wonderful small role for Kate Dickie (as Sister Condron), someone I always enjoy watching onscreen.

There are mis-steps, with the plot sometimes feeling a bit overcrowded, one or two moments a bit too neat, and some scenes showing sides of characters that make them much more difficult to like, but the good far outweighs the bad here. And the good includes a beautiful ending that breaks away from the style of everything preceding it, giving you a goosebump-raising rendition of a wonderful song and a cameo appearance that will be sure to put a big grin on your face.

8/10

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Prime Time: Cinderella (2021)

Writer-director Kay Cannon has a number of films to her credit, but is arguably best known for her work on the Pitch Perfect movies. I enjoy the Pitch Perfect movies, despite them generally going along with the usual rules of diminishing returns. So I went into this new version of Cinderella with a sense of optimism that many others lacked. Even when the bad review started to appear, I tried to have a little faith in the idea that I would be simply entertained. That faith didn’t take long to start dissipating.

Cinderella isn’t terrible, not all of the time anyway. It’s just often not that good, and then some sequences get worse than that. And you have to tolerate small appearances from certain cast members that I just keep finding less and less tolerable each time I see them.

I won’t summarise them story. I cannot help you if you don’t know about poor Cinderella already. The titular character is played here by Camila Cabello, the Prince is played by Nicholas Galitzine, and the cruel stepmother is played by Idina Menzel. Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, and Tallulah Greive are the other royals, Billy Porter takes on the fairy godmother role, although it is reworked slightly, and British panel shows were robbed to place Rob Beckett, James Acaster, Romesh Ranganathan in amongst the fairytale antics. And James Corden gets some screentime, unfortunately. 

Mainly placing itself in that specific category now known as “jukebox musicals”, Cinderella starts off well enough, with an enjoyable mash-up that includes the excellent “Rhythm Nation”. It’s a shame that the rest of the film doesn’t do as well, with most of the other song choices being mistreated by their rearrangements. A Queen song is murdered, an En Vogue song just reminded me of their appearance in Coming 2 America, and the less said about “Seven Nation Army” the better.

Cannon knows what she wants to present to viewers, and she delivers something obviously straining to blend the modern and cool with all of the traditional fairytale moments that you expect. This is olde worlde antics with modern sensibilities laid over everything, but it doesn’t work as well as it could.

A big reason for that is cast. The “old guard” have a lot of fun in their roles, particularly Brosnan and Driver, but the leads fail to convey any real sense of them actually enjoying themselves. I don’t like the singing style of Cabello (all whiney, quivering, use of five syllables in words where two are present) and she doesn’t have the right presence to hold your attention in the non-singing parts. Galitzine is no better, lacking charisma and unable to sell either the heart or humour in his main scenes. Porter is fun in his small amount of screentime, which is really just one main scene, and Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer raise some smiles as “the ugly sisters”, but it must be said that the British personalities don’t get enough to do, so are just there to prompt thoughts of “oh, look who it is” when they appear. At least Nandi Bushell also gets to join in with the fun for all of two seconds.

Fairytales have been adapted and twisted so often over the past few decades that you are spoilt for choice. Almost all of the other movies you could think of, right now, are better than this. It isn’t absolutely terrible. It is just a mess that consistently feels like it is trying to hard to be clever and cool, while rarely managing to be either.

4/10

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