The Christophers was a mystery screening (my 8th of the year) and one that I genuinely didn’t see coming. I had seen the trailer but it wasn't one that I would probably have gone to see normally. Amusingly, this is the second Steven Soderbergh film I have seen like this. The last time was Prescence which was about a ghost but seen from its POV. This time two kids of a famous artist (James Corden & Jesse Gunning) hire forger Lori (Michaela Coel) to complete their estranged father’s unfinished work so they can be sold after he dies which we are told is close.
I thought that Ian McKellen (Julian) and Michaela Coel worked well together. The relationship naturally starts off a little bit prickly. Whenever Julian asked Lori a personal question, Lori would answer in what a typical Gen-Z way and I was worried that the film was going to be like this and be totally alienating to me but thankfully thawing improves but to the point where it betrays either character. Julian doesnt feel like its a million miles away from Ian McKellen. I did find it amusing when we first meet Julian and he is doing Cameo videos (which unexpectedly become relevant right at the end of the film). The last time I saw Ian McKellen was in The Critic where he played an aging Theatre Critic and in this he plays an aging artist who in his spare time does the videos to try and earn some extra money. I suppose when you are the age that McKellen is then you can stop doing Gandalf roles and do what are more interesting and more grounded roles and its nice to see.
Michaela Coel is good in a role that is relatively hard to like. There isnt a lot of room for range and Coel manages to drag as much as she can out of it. The film at times wants to make he appear to be some talented forger but then they try and input motivation as to why she is in the same room as Julian and its because of a meeting on a TV show years earlier but she seems to want to stick it to Sally and Barnaby and yet seems to want the money so her motivation is mixed and not very well thought out but during the more lucid moments in the plot, Michaela Coel manages to make you happy that she has made a career by the end of the film.
Normally I find James Corden (Barnaby) to be totally insufferable. He comes across as a totally unlikeable person in real life and his performances have been average at best. The only time I haven’t completely disliked his performance was in Cats and that was because the quality bar was so low. Jessica Gunning (Sally) or the woman from Baby Reindeer was fine, her performance was always secondary to Corden’s. Not because he was stealing the screen time but because her character seemed to be secondary to Barnaby.
I did find myself asking one question and its comes towards the end when Barnaby and Sally are trying to buy Lori’s services and say that they can only give her £20,000 even though they have already been pre-paid £1 million. How have they only got £20,000? What have they done with it?
I enjoyed this film but I can’t say that I loved it. There was something stopping me from loving this film and I honestly can’t put my finger on it. I think that its a bit too slow and its lacking something that could just zap some energy into it. I think that its a film that people will struggle to enjoy and it will struggle to get an audience. Like I said at the beginning of the review, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see this film at the cinema if I had the choice but at least there weren’t any walkouts which feels like a rarity.
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