Calendar Girls

Calendar Girls
by Nigel Cole

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DVD details

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Anamorphic; Color; Dolby; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC

DVD Reviews of Calendar Girls

DVD Review: The movie is not quite as good as the idea for the calendar
Summary: 4 Stars

The focus in on best friends Annie Clarke (Julie Walters) and Chris Harper (Helen Mirren), who have to endure the boring weekly meetings of their local Women's Institute where they learn all about the joys of broccoli. However, such concerns become trivial with Annie's husband, John (John Alderton), is diagnosed with leukemia. They try everything they can at the local hospital, but in the end John dies. One thing Annie remembers is something that John said before the end: "The flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire. Every stage of their growth has its own beauty, but the last phase is always the most glorious. Then very quickly they all go to seed."

Annie wants to honor John's memory by raising money to support leukemia research or to at least get a decent sofa for the room at the hospital where she spend so many of John's last days, but it is Chris who comes up with the idea of raising money by having members of the WI pose "nude" for a calendar ("nude" is naked but with art thrown in). Chris will be January and Annie will be February, and Jessie (Annette Crosby), Cora (Linda Bassett), Celia (Celia Imrie), and a few others volunteer for the other months and to provide each other with the support it will take for them to go through with this. The ladies are surprised that their calendar becomes not merely a local success, but a national and international one as well. You would think that this might be the climax of the film, but there is more to come, and that is where "Calendar Girls" gets off track.

The calendar is a success because the photographs are indeed art. My favorites were Miss July, where we see none of the "naughty bits," but the curve of the woman from her neck to her hip, and the one of the meeting where every figure except one is seen from the back, sitting in a chair, wearing their best hats. Actually, the photographs in the film are less risqué than those that appeared in the original calendar, a few of which you can see in one of the bonus features. As for the stars, Helen Mirren appears behind an apple press pressing apples (ah, the Freudian implications) while Julie Walters is playing the piano au natural.

Everything up to the ladies reaching the heights of their success is pretty good, but then the film starts getting into downside of the experience without really deciding what point it is trying to make. "Calendar Girls" is not really about naked bodies but about self-expression and female empowerment, so when it decides to go off in yet another direction without clear rhyme or reason, I am not inclined to follow along.

The real calendar had an initial print run of 500 copies, which quickly sold out, and eventually the ladies of Yorkshire raise more than half-a-million pounds for a local hospital. That reality helps to forgive those parts of "Calendar Girls" that try to turn the 2003 film from director Nigel Cole into something more profound than what it is: a nice little true story that deserves to be celebrated.

Description of Calendar Girls