What's with naughty old-timers in movies lately?
In "Mrs. Henderson Presents," which opened this week, recently widowed heiress Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) refuses to conclude her years in a flurry of charity functions, jewelry shopping and dull hobbies.
Instead she buys an old theater in London's West End and stages all-nude musical revues, to the delight of 1930s English audiences and the shock of snooty Lord Cromer (Christopher Guest).
The movie, directed by Stephen Frears, seems to be merely the latest in an outpouring of movies -- British and American -- featuring ladies and gentlemen of a certain age on a nutty new tear.
Ever since the 1997 hit "The Full Monty," in which six steelworkers, including an older fella, earn money by forming a striptease act, British filmmakers have been seeking ways to repeat that box office success. They seem to be grabbing at senior citizens to do so.
In 2003's "Calendar Girls," for example, the members of a women's auxiliary bare all for a calendar spread that will raise money for cancer research. Old ladies act like teenagers, giggling and rolling around, after mistaking marijuana for tea leaves in 2000's "Saving Grace." And who can forget that wizened and completely naked Irishman (played by David Kelly) riding on his motorbike in 1998's "Waking Ned Devine"? (The same movie, incidentally, asks us to laugh when a nasty old lady in a telephone booth is knocked off a high cliff -- booth and all -- after a careering van hits her.)
American comedies are just as cavalier with the old, if not more so. In the recent release "Grandma's Boy," Shirley Jones (she of Partridge family fame) plays a very promiscuous senior who hops into bed with a young man, after recounting graphic tales of sexual liaisons in her youth. "Wedding Crashers," a massive hit this past summer, features a foulmouthed granny (octogenarian Ellen Albertini Dow) who apparently knows how to rap with the best of 'em. Dow's a repeat offender, by the way. She was a rapping senior in Adam Sandler's 1998 comedy, "The Wedding Singer," too. And in Curtis Hansen's sister flick, "In Her Shoes," an insufferable grandma in tennis shoes (Francine Beers) produces an endless flow of one-liners, as if she's tuning up for an upcoming Borscht Belt tour. We are supposed to laugh, in large part, because, you know, these women are crazy old codgers.
"Old people are often considered figures of fun," says "Mrs. Henderson" scriptwriter Martin Sherman. "And isn't it 'cute' that an old person is smoking pot? You never see movies about their sex lives or other emotional issues. It's assumed they've given all that up. But most will tell you, they still feel 20 or 30 inside."
Well, we don't see Mrs. Henderson's sex life either. But Mrs. H., who is based on a real character, is rich and empowered and doesn't have to do any doffing. She retains her dignity. "She was this incredible woman," says Sherman, "who was 70 and an enormous force who didn't conform to the ideas of old age people carry around."
The movie's Mrs. Henderson is "a sparky, lively lady," not a figure of fun, because of the script and the way Dench plays her, says Frears. "She is a fantastic actor, and very, very lively and won't settle for easy solutions."
This brings up an essential difference between the English and American movies: The Denches, Maggie Smiths and Helen Mirrens who frequently show up in these films are just as comfortable performing Ibsen and Shakespeare as silly capers. British actors, in general, have a higher pedigree, and enjoy long-standing, distinguished careers on stage, television and film. Inevitably, they make even the silliest roles even better than the script.
This doesn't stop the guilty pandering, of course. "Mrs. Henderson" was surely made because of its saucy premise -- spunky old dame puts on naked show -- rather than Dench's acting abilities . And even though the performances in Brit films are usually authoritative, it doesn't stop that faint whiff of exploitation. In "Calendar Girls," for instance, the fifty-something Chris Harper (Mirren) declares that, when it comes to finding a cure for cancer, she'd "run around Skipton Market naked, smeared in plum jam, wearing nothing but a knitted tea cozy on me 'ead and singing 'Jerusalem.' " The nobility of her mission, we are to believe, transcends the nudity. And Mirren delivers the speech as if she were Portia in the climactic court scene in "The Merchant of Venice." But at the same time, we are forced to entertain the image of a mature old lady jiggling about in the buff. There's nothing wrong, per se, with a woman's physique, aged, dressed or whatever.
But that spectacle is treated as pure, rolling-in-the-aisles comedy, and there's your subtle little crime.
This article appeared in the Washington Post on January 22, 2006.