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Mrs Henderson PresentsMike ClarkLaura Henderson goes way, way beyond where Florence ever has, though it doesn't do much to help Mrs. Henderson Presents. It says something that during a scene in which nude chorines are turned into a fleshy backdrop, you spend as much time looking at your watch as what's on screen. The movie, based on a real London West End theater, suffers from a flatfooted script and lackluster direction by Stephen Frears, who can be first-rate (Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity). Henderson (Judi Dench) has been widowed by a domineering husband in the late 1930s and, wondering what to do, impulsively buys a theater ... and wonders what to do. Eventually forging an alliance with a stage revu pro (Bob Hoskins) who promises to deliver more drama, she eventually gets the idea to augment the production with unclad chorus girls. The censors' one condition: The women cannot move, a stipulation uncomfortably agreed to by her stuffy friend the Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest, in mildly amusing casting). The show becomes a hit and never misses a performance amid bombings during World War II, and that's just about it. With Hoskins' character happily married to a woman who stays out of sight, even the few hints of sexual tension with Dench are muffled. Worse, a weak attempt to give just one of the chorines a personal story is too little, too late. The on-stage acts rarely vary in tone, and nothing much happens off stage except for one "nobody-knows-the-trouble-I've-seen" scene in which Hoskins goes full-frontal himself. We'd have preferred Jessica Rabbit. Though it's bereft of the sass that even so-so Hollywood backstage musicals once routinely delivered, this prestige picture from the newly formed Weinstein Company appears to be this year's most contrived attempt to pull the wool over Oscar's eye. If this sounds like a pipe dream, Chocolat and The Cider House Rules somehow cracked the best-picture five during the Weinstein brothers' Miramax days. The lumberingly old-fashioned film's only hope is that the academy is aging at a faster rate than the rest of us. But if that's the case, voters will recall that the story was basically done in 1945 with Rita Hayworth in Tonight and Every Night (without, of course, the nudity).
Even more than the-easier-to-take Calendar Girls from two Decembers ago, Henderson seems to have been made for blue-haired- ladies who want to be shocked just enough to go "tee-hee" before they go to a brunch where tea is served with crustless white bread.
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