Susan Granger’s review of “St. Trinian’s” (NeoClassics Films)
I suspect this exaggerated British comedy lost a great deal of its jolly credence whilst crossing the Atlantic. Made by the once-prestigious Ealing Studios (“The Lavender Hill Mob”), it is boorish and crude and often the vulgarity gets downright boring.
Set at an all-girls private school in England, the gimmick is that the eccentric, exotic headmistress, Miss Camilla Fritton, is played by Rupert Everett in drag. And he’s no Dame Edna Everage (a.k.a. Barry Humphries). Indeed, when the stern, newly appointed Minister of Education (Colin Firth) decides to make an “example” out of the bizarrely dysfunctional St. Trinian’s by shutting it down, he’s warned about Miss Fritton.
“Be afraid, be very afraid,” an underling warns. “The headmistress is barking mad.”
So are her wild, unruly students, a group of playground terrorists, led by the head girl (Gemma Arterton) and including Miss Fritton’s naïve niece (Talulah Riley). These delinquents don’t want the school to close so, to raise money, they concoct an elaborate plan to steal Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” painting from the London’s National Gallery to sell on the black market while a trio of their dimwitted classmates (Tamsin Egerton, Amara Khan and Antonia Bernath) compete on a quiz show.
Created by cartoonist Ronald Seale, the St. Trinian’s concept inspired five comedies between 1954 and 1980, so it’s a shame that Rupert Everett flounders in the dual role created by Alastair Sim. Writers Nick Moorcroft & Piers Ashorth and directors Oliver Parker & Barnaby Thompson broadly stage sketch after sketch, accompanied by the strains “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” and find amusement in a terrier named Mr. Darcy persistently humping Colin Firth.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “St. Trinian’s” flunks with a fitfully funny 4. Coincidentally, the timing coincides with the closing of St. David’s, one of Britain’s oldest girls’ schools, which ran out of money after 293 years. In a strong economy, schools could survive because of reputation and in spite of flawed financial planning and lack of proper management – just like the fictional St. Trinian’s.
