moviereview - St Trinian's

ST TRINIAN'S

	A private all-girls school comes under threat from the Minister for Education. The resourceful girls of St Trinian's rally round to save their school, and their head mistress.	score 1+	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Lena Heady, Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Mischa Barton

Director
Oliver Parker
Barnaby Thompson

Screenwriter
Piers Ashworth

Country
UK

Rating / Running Time
M / 100 minutes

Australian Release
March 2008

Official Site

There’s an established and somewhat distinguished tradition of Englishmen dressing up as women. Alastair Sim did it. Ronnie Barker, Benny Hill and Kenny Everett did it. Now Rupert Everett joins the list, reprising Sim’s role as both Clarence and Millicent Fritton in Parker’s update of the much loved Ealing comedy. Yet truth told, The Belles of St Trinians (1957) was never much of a film and this remake, starting from an easy mark, is considerably worse. Considerably. In all respects St Trinian’s is a woeful attempt at broad comedy that exists solely to celebrate stupidity and delinquency. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Millicent Fritton runs a private girl’s school noted for its anarchic doctrine of free expression. The raucous students are consequently ungovernable yet when the school is threatened by a new Education Minister (Colin Firth), they band together to fight a common foe. Money is required and “Scarlett Johannson’s” painting of The Girl with A Pearl Earring becomes their unlikely target. But first they have to win a TV quiz show for schools.

There was a faint hope that St Trinian’s would be so bad it would be good. Parker had successfully directed Everett in An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. But it isn’t good. It’s simply bad. With two decent lines in the entire script – one involving the mishearing of the word count and another in which Everett as Millicent remarks: “Don’t you think I’d make a remarkable queen?” – we’re left pondering one failed attempt after another to shock, inspire or entertain, propped up by routine pop songs.

Not that the young women in our audience seemed to mind the inane dialogue, slack structure, sloppy script or shoddy technicals as served by Parker and his pals. In fact, they seemed to find the whole sorry mess quite the diversion required on a Friday afternoon. Perhaps St Trinian’s is closer to the reality of a girl’s school than we’d like to think.

// COLIN FRASER