'Blithe Spirit' Review: Flat, Dated Resurrection of Noël Coward Farce Proves Some Things Are Better Left Dead lmtonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lmtonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SYNOPSIS:
A struggling crime novelist experiments with a séance in search of inspiration, only to unwittingly summon the ghost of his deceased ex-wife.
Writer’s block is a very real problem. Certainly, anyone of a creative persuasion who has struggled with a blank page in front of them will recognise the way in which 1930s-set farce
Blithe Spirit introduces Dan Stevens’s crime novelist Charles Condomine – only able to hammer the word “HELP” into his typewriter. Perhaps less obvious is his plan to solve the issue. To giggles of derision from his wife Ruth (Isla Fisher) and their friends, he hires spiritual medium Madame Arcati (Judi Dench) to conduct a séance, hoping her tricks of the trade will inspire him to tell a supernaturally-inflected tale.
1/5
The linguistic wit and thrust of Noel Coward s play have been replaced by posh-speak pastiche and ham-fisted narrative gambits
15 January 2021 • 10:56am
Judi Dench in Blithe Spirit
Credit: StudioCanal
12A cert, 96 min. Dir: Edward Hall. Cast: Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher, Leslie Mann, Judi Dench, Emilia Fox, Julian Rhind-Tutt
If you’ve spent the last nine months pining for some light relief in the theatre, a sparky screen adaptation of Blithe Spirit might be just what you need. Good news! Such a mood-boosting marvel exists, and has done since 1945. Directed by David Lean, and starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford, it’s available to rent from Amazon or Apple TV, or stream on BritBox. On the other hand, if top-to-toe miscalculations are your bag, by all means help yourself to the 2021 version, which might be an object lesson in what not to do with Coward on screen.
Isla started out on Australia s staple soap, Home and Away
Credit: Ben Rayner
In a low-key bakery not far from the Hollywood home she shares with her British actor/comedian husband Sacha Baron Cohen and their three young children, Isla Fisher is telling me about her latest role in a new film adaptation of Blithe Spirit, one of Noël Coward’s best-loved plays.
‘I was so nervous,’ she confesses, dipping a buttered baguette into a bowl of chicken soup. ‘Being an Australian in a British period drama! I was working with my dialect coach and I just thought, “If I get this accent wrong, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”’
Commissioned by his father-in-law to transform one of his stories into a 90-page screenplay, Charles has struggled for inspiration, much to the frustration of his beloved Ruth (Isla Fisher). While she’s advised by her tennis partner to find “someone else to shake her sheets” in order for their marriage to last, Charles confesses that “Big Ben has stopped chiming” because of his other worries. Desperate for any kind of remedy, a trip to the theatre gives him an idea. Despite watching medium Madame Arcati’s (Judi Dench) act go awry, Charles is convinced her nightly “transcendent miracles” of communicating with the other side has exciting dramatic potential.