Netflix; Cert 12
Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan deserve better than ‘The Thursday Murder Club’
Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan in ‘The Thursday Murder Club’
Curiously, for a film about a group of elderly hobbyists, investigating fraud and murder over tea and sponge cake, The Thursday Murder Club, is sometimes difficult to follow.
The cosy set-up – amateur sleuths chasing real-life killers from the comfort of their palatial retirement community – is fine.
The bland execution, however, is another story entirely. Based on the bestselling novel by Richard Osman, Chris Columbus’s weightless adaptation takes an awful long time to do very little.
Our handsome headliners provide classier entertainment than the material deserves. Pierce Brosnan loses his accent but never his charm as an ex-trade unionist from London. Celia Imrie delights as a widowed baker, and Ben Kingsley portrays yet another respectable clever clogs.
Helen Mirren, meanwhile, is their charismatic leader, a world-class spy trapped in a lazy and largely suspenseless mystery.
Is The Thursday Murder Club a send-up or a tribute to the classic whodunnits of yesteryear? It isn’t funny enough to tick the first box and is perhaps too condescending to check the latter. A film so dull, you’ll forget all about it while you’re watching it.
Two stars