Hyde Park on Hudson
Directed by Roger Michell
Starring: Laura Linney, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Olivia Colman, Samuel West, Elizabeth Wilson
Grade: D+ [28]
Loitering somewhere
between “The Bridges of Madison County” and “An Education,” yet nowhere near as
good as either, Hyde Park is the
essence of poor middlebrow filmmaking. Two decades too late, it’s the
self-important, voice-over-infested project you’re more likely to see Joan
Plowright or Ellen Burstyn starring in these days than poor Laura Linney, and,
to my memory, it’s the least Linney
has ever impressed. It isn’t an indictment of her so much, given that, of the
cast, only Olivia Williams attempts to elevate her first lady-character above
besieged-by-the-time twaddle. But that might be because she’s playing the only
person who isn’t swept away by the alluded charms of Bill Murray’s President
Roosevelt, who’s written to captivate but has precious little on the page to
enliven. We’re once again supposed to be amused by King George VI’s awkward
demeanour, and the cheap standoff between Anglo-American relations as a brittle
opposition of polite decorum and brash self-sufficiency. This isn’t a portrait
of history so much as a comment-section cartoon, with cutting satire replaced
by pandering bourgeois humour. Those will laugh, those won't; None of us will remember this film in six months’ time, so what
does it matter?
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