KEY POINTS:
St Trinians
Herald Rating: * *
Cast: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Stephen Fry, Lena Headey
Director: Oliver Parker
Running time: 101 mins
Rating: M (sexual references)
Screening: Hoyts, SkyCity, Berkeley cinemas
Verdict: Dismal, colossally witless remake of an Ealing classic.
Those who can remember the pre-1960 Ealing comedies, including 1954 classic The Belles of St Trinians, will need no warning to keep their distance from this colossally witless remake. Of the remainder, it's hard to see what audience it aims at: no teenage girl would crack a smile (I shared a cinema row with five of them, so I've researched this) and its (admittedly sparing) sexual innuendo makes it too sleazy for the under-12s.
The original developed the idea of genius cartoonist Ronald Searle into a madcap romp with some real talent in the cast. Alistair Sim as both the indulgent headmistress Millicent Fritton and (out of drag) her brother; a young George Cole (Minder's Arthur Daley); and Joyce Grenfell.
This one has Everett and Firth as, respectively, Fritton and her nemesis school's minister, but their performances are thin and brittle - bits of knowing camp without a trace of self-mockery.
The debt-ridden school is faced with foreclosure until the girls hit on an audacious (read ridiculous) plan to raise 500,000 - steal Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring. Cue self-referential one-liner: one of the girls, seeing the painting, says: "No wonder Colin Firth wanted to shag her."
The film is full of such touches - every movie from The Italian Job to Gladiator gets referenced - but it is smart-arse rather than witty and the predictable sight gags (the fart cushion gets a trot) seem to have been dreamt up by a committee. Even I know that the Girl Power ethos it trades on is so last century. The reviewer for The Sun, where they like girls in school uniform, loved it. Nuff said.
