THE STORY – Four retirees spend their time solving cold case murders for fun, but their casual sleuthing takes a thrilling turn when they find themselves with a real whodunit on their hands.
THE CAST – Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, David Tennant, Naomi Ackie, Tom Ellis, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Daniel Mays & Jonathan Pryce
THE TEAM – Chris Columbus (Director), Katy Brand & Suzanne Heathcote (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 118 Minutes
Earlier this week, the venerable Chicago Tribune eliminated the position of film critic, leaving the city that famously gave the world both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert without a single full-time film critic at any paper. It’s easy to be pessimistic about this, to feel like the world has moved that much closer to not caring about the arts or art criticism at all. But in the face of films like the Netflix original, “The Thursday Murder Club,” it makes sense. There have always been films that were “critic-proof” – the early comedies of Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler weren’t good, but they gave the popular comedians free range to let loose with whatever kooky idea came into their brains, which was all audiences wanted to see – but the rise of streaming services and their blandly-styled original content has stretched the definition of that term to the breaking point. These days, something being “critic-proof” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter what the critics think, but that there simply isn’t anything to critique.
We can debate whether streaming content is actually meant to be watched or if it’s meant to be on in the background while audiences do other things, but what isn’t up for debate is the quality of streaming content. Sure, there’s plenty of outright slop in the world of streaming originals, as well as the occasional film festival darling acquired to keep cinephiles paying their monthly subscription fees. Most streaming originals, though, share the same blandly professional aesthetic – bright, glossy cinematography of expensive-looking production design, a bare-bones script that gives the film personality with the occasional “quirky” line of dialogue, and a cast doing their level best to keep everything from falling apart at the seams. Nothing is outright bad, but everything is focused on the surface, with little to no subtext, meaning that there’s precious little to discuss about these movies, other than whether or not you enjoyed yourself while watching them.
And wouldn’t you know it, I enjoyed myself watching “The Thursday Murder Club.” Then again, it would be rather difficult not to enjoy a film in which Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, and Helen Mirren play a group of residents at the palatial Cooper’s Chase retirement home who meet weekly to solve cold cases in an effort to stave off boredom, who must solve the real-life murder of one of the owners of Cooper’s Chase before a greedy developer played by David Tennant evicts them. Or, at the very least, it would take a real effort on the part of the filmmakers to make something unenjoyable with that cast and premise. And lo, even Chris Columbus (“Rent,” “The Christmas Chronicles 2”) proves unable to spoil Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote’s adaptation of Richard Osman’s novel. Granted, he doesn’t add much, but Columbus’s greatest strength as a filmmaker has always been his sense of pacing (it’s why he’s much better at comedy than drama), and “The Thursday Murder Club” moves at a sprightly pace in keeping with the bright look and jaunty score by Thomas Newman.
The cast members don’t even have to strain themselves trying to keep up with Columbus’s breezy pacing. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, given that between them they have two Oscars and countless BAFTA awards for their work over the years. Even the actors in smaller roles, like Naomi Ackie as the local police officer who shares information on the case with the group and Tom Ellis as Brosnan’s former boxing champ son, have proven their bona fides in multiple projects before this. They all glide through the film with the greatest of ease, giving the humor of the script just the light touch it needs to work and investing just enough emotion into the characters so that the more dramatic material in the film’s final act lands. They do what British actors have been doing for decades: Giving a B-movie a little class by treating it as seriously as they would Shakespeare. And, as it has for decades, it works.
Even as a murder mystery, “The Thursday Murder Club” doesn’t really do a whole lot. The plot trades in the same tropes that marked Agatha Christie’s work, namely, multiple red herrings and a glance at real-world relevance, while never doing anything remotely interesting with them. That’s part of the fun of the cozy murder mystery, but it’s also symptomatic of the thinking that goes into greenlighting, budgeting, and producing original content for streaming. You start with a buzzy hook to get audiences engaged, make sure it looks nice so they don’t stop watching because they can’t see, and keep the plot moving as straightforwardly as possible for no more than two hours before the credits roll. It’s a winning formula to keep audiences on the platform even if they’re not actively watching, and it does provide a certain level of quality control that keeps the films from being piss-poor. However, it also buffs everything to such a high sheen that the final product feels somewhat inhuman, like an algorithm literally made it. Despite all coming from different artists with different things to say, they all feel the same – simple, uncomplicated pieces of entertainment for simple, uncomplicated people who want to be entertained. You don’t need a critic to write a thousand words analyzing the form and meaning of that kind of film, and indeed, there’s really not much for critics to say about most of them, because there’s not much to dig into under the surface. In today’s entertainment landscape, which is seemingly dominated by this type of content, yeah, maybe critics are unnecessary. But shouldn’t films be more than just content? Shouldn’t art provoke more discussion than “I liked it,” or “I didn’t like it,” and the fond memory of one scene or line reading? Maybe not all the time, but at least some of the time? Because when it comes down to it, movies like “The Thursday Murder Club” aren’t really good or bad, they just exist. That may get you subscriptions and views in the moment, but it won’t help the film have any kind of lasting legacy.
