Military Wives is a British film not only shot by the director of The Full Monty, but sticking to the same formula – replacing stripping men with singing women.
The audience for Military Wives on the night I saw it was numerous and enthusiastic.
Aside from the easy to grasp storyline it stars two favourite actors – Kristen Scott-Thomas, representing the officer class, and TV favourite Sharon Horgan as the wife of the sergeant major.
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The real-life story of Military Wives was already told on television a few years ago - the account of how the wives and partners of British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan coped by forming a choir.
Predictably, a certain amount of poetic license was engaged in this version.
The men (and one woman) take off, leaving their other halves at a loose end. There is a social club, run after a fashion by Mrs Sergeant Major Lisa.
But the Colonel’s wife thinks they can do better and starts taking suggestions.
And from the start it’s clear that, whatever feelgood gimmick these Military Wives get up to – singing, baking, ballroom dancing or stamp collecting – Kate and Lisa are going to bicker all the way through it.
It’s also apparent that these wives may be enthusiastic, but they’re a little light on musical talent.
This isn’t helped by the choir-directors’ conflicting approaches. Kate thinks everyone should read sheet-music, for instance, while Lisa favours a more “Now that’s what I call music” strategy on a tinny keyboard.
The end results are initially dire. And you wait for the arrival of a top musical trainer to lick them all into shape - a sort of School of Easy Listening Pop, perhaps.
Well that doesn’t happen. But at least one person proves to have rather a good voice.
As a Military Wife says “Well, of course the Welsh girl can sing!” And as far as the film’s concerned, one good singer means “Job Done” for the rest of the choir.
Suddenly everyone’s shaped up, and warbling solid gold hits by Yazoo, Human League, Dido and Cyndi Lauper.
And there comes a time when the choir – who’ve performed in public now a grand total of no times – is headhunted by the Army to perform at a real-life high-profile event at the Albert Hall.
It’s about now that I had a few personal problems with Military Wives – mostly about the rather thin characterization of the choir members.
Kristin Scott-Thomas and Sharon Horgan do most of the dramatic heavy lifting, despite some potentially attractive characters set up, then largely ignored.
Director Peter Cattaneo was the man behind another feelgood gang-show some years ago, The Full Monty. And one of the script-writers Rachel Tunnard made a lovely, unpredictable little film more recently called Adult Life Skills.
So what I’m saying is that I was a little disappointed.…unlike my audience, who included not only quite a few wives, but some actual military, and who had a pretty good time.
What they wanted to see was Kristen and Sharon, a choir made up of some appealing – not dauntingly brilliant - lasses, and a few songs they already knew.
They also wanted any problems sorted at the end – either on-stage at the Albert Hall, or with a little tear and a hug afterwards.
Yes, they’d probably have preferred all this in a better film. But failing that, this was the sort of story they wanted, and therefore rather better than the alternative. Putting me in my place, in other words.
A sign that I may have underestimated a film and its audience is when it sticks around far longer than I was expecting.
This time last year, a totally formulaic musical called The Greatest Showman remained on screens here for so long that I ended up reviewing it three months after it came out. And rather enjoyed it, to my embarrassment.
