The Missionary
by Richard Loncraine

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Category: DVD
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DVD Reviews of The Missionary

DVD Review: MONTY PYTHON ALERT! Cuddly Michael Palin's "The Missionary"
Summary: 5 Stars

DVD Review: Full Screen
Summary: 1 Stars

DVD Review: Strange, funny, with good performances, by Palin, et. al.
Summary: 4 Stars

DVD Review: The cleric and the working girls
Summary: 2 Stars

Michael Palin is the Reverend Charles Fortescue, an Anglican cleric recalled to England in 1906 after spending the previous ten years in the bush among African tribesmen. Charles happily anticipates marriage to his sweetheart of long standing, Deborah (Phoebe Nicholls), and, perhaps, a posting as the vicar of a country church in the south of England. If he only knew, poor devil, he might have elected to stay on the Dark Continent.

THE MISSIONARY encompasses three subplots. While silly and demanding Deborah plans the wedding, she allows her beloved not even so much as a kiss on the cheek before the vows are solemnized. Until then, her great passion is for her system of filing papers and correspondence, an interest about which she prattles on endlessly. In the meantime, the Bishop of London gives Charles his new assignment - to establish a halfway house for prostitutes in the squalid London Dockyards. But the greatest threat to Fortescue's peace of mind is the bored and lusty wife of a filthy rich and semi-senile old Lord (Trevor Howard), Lady Isabel Ames (Maggie Smith), who offers herself in exchange for financial backing of the Mission for Fallen Women. Before long, Charles has problems with the gentler gender, especially when his redeemed working girls begin showing their, um, appreciation for his kind and sensitive nature. It doesn't help Fortescue maintain a stiff upper lip that he's a closet sensualist too long denied.

THE MISSIONARY, described as a "gentle satire", doesn't really work because the separate parts never mesh as well as they could. Deborah remains clueless virtually throughout; the complication represented by Lady Isabel veers off into a clumsily done sidebar involving an attempted murder; the relationship between Charles and his flock is quickly left behind. There aren't enough chuckles to recommend this film, although the best are perhaps when the butler employed by Lord and Lady Ames first ushers Fortescue into a country palace so huge that the guide gets hopelessly lost. Or when the sudden death of a terminally aged, potential benefactor goes unnoticed by Charles while expounding at length on the spiritual needs of the deprived underclasses.

A much classier comedy about an Anglican minister unnerved by the pesky existence of sex is SIRENS (1994), which benefits from the discomfiture of Hugh Grant in the lead role faced with an unashamedly unclothed bevy of Babes that includes supermodel Elle Macpherson.

DVD Review: A Missionary With a Difference
Summary: 4 Stars

But all does not go as planned. He keeps running into an intriguing woman, his fianc? is obsessed with filing, and his church wants him to tackle the growing problem of "fallen women" working in the docklands.

Faced with the task of setting up a mission in London, he must find funding and souls to save. But to do either he finds that he may have to extend a different sort of kindness. One that gets him money and fills the mission with prospects.

But, again, all is not well. Other churches are jealous, all of their prospects want to go to Palin's mission. His funding source gets jealous and stops funding. He learns of a murder plot that he must stop. He must even go against the wishes of the church in order to save the women.

All of this is wrapped in a sort of dry British humor. We have the fianc? who is utterly obsessed with filing, a butler who can't go from one room to another without getting lost, and all sorts of subtle gags. In the middle is Palin as the straight man dealing with it all.

A good movie, but I have to agree with others that I can't believe MGM released it only in full-screen (several scenes have only a character's nose making it onto the screen).

Description of The Missionary

General DVDs

• Genres > Comedy
• Satire
• Art House & International > By Country > British Cinema > Comedy
• General