FilmJudge - St. Trinian's

REVIEW

St. Trinian's
2007
Certificate: 12 | Runtime: 101 | Director: Oliver Parker & Barnaby Thompson
Starring: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Talulah Riley

New girl Annabelle Fritton (Riley) is starting the new term at St. Trinian's, a school run by her aunt Camilla (Everett) and known for the dreadful behaviour of its girls. True to form, Annabelle encounters a torrent of pranks, violence, illegal activity and finds it hard to fit in. However, when St. Trinian's is threatened with closure the girls club together, under the guidance of head girl Kelly (Gemma Arterton), and hatch a plan to get the money their school needs.

There's a very simple reason why St. Trinian's doesn't work, and that reason is the script by Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft. The concept itself should still work, and the cast isn't actually half bad. But the film is only marginally funny, the characters are short-changed, and it tries to accomplish the impossible by attempting to be risqué without veering into adult territory.

Rupert Everett is no Alastair Sim, but he makes for a pretty darn effective headmistress. As Camilla (a dead ringer for Camilla Parker Bowles), Everett strides his way through the film with a delightful twinkle in his eye. Camilla is a saucy old lush, and Everett sells her very well indeed. Elsewhere, Colin Firth is on form as the nasty Minister of Education, and fair play to him for taking the brunt of so many in-jokes. And Jodie Whittaker is great fun as the rather useless school secretary. On the other hand, Russell Brand is supposed to be Flash Harry but effectively plays himself, and the result is jarring and distracting. The rest of the capable adult cast are pretty much wasted - including Toby Jones, Celia Imrie and Lena Headey.

Even the kids themselves aren't bad. Riley makes for an effective posh girl gone bad, while Arterton really is quite good as the authoritative and charismatic Kelly. Tamsin Egerton's airhead total airhead is also rather funny. The problem however, is that there are just too many of these characters. The original films focused almost entirely on the teachers - the girls were generally anonymous, and resembled a sort of tide of screaming chaos. Here though, the film has an awkward desire to spend as much time with the girls as with the teachers, and the end result is that none of them are given enough time. I'm not expecting great swathes of character development, but something would have been nice.

And the film really struggles when it comes to the humour. It would be going too far to say that the film is without jokes; it's not, and there are a couple of really rather amusing moments. But there are great chunks of the film where every single joke falls completely flat; you'll experience that awkward silence in the cinema where people realise something was supposed to be funny, but can't bring themselves to laugh. And I also take issue with the films length. It's not exactly Gone With the Wind, but the final act seems to drag on almost interminably.

There's a decent film trying to get out of St. Trinian's. It has a concept that could have been skilfully updated to a more modern environment, but it needed the right people to do it. The end result is a film that's occasionally good, but regularly not. Rebellious teenage girls will probably think it's a riot, but I suspect it'll appeal to few other people.

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