Mrs. Henderson Presents: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

What Stephen Frears presents in "Mrs. Henderson Presents" is twofold--a stage filled with artfully exposed naked bodies, including one scene in which Bob Hoskins bares it all (the courage!), and a shift in form for Judi Dench, who at once courts and leaves behind the stuffy, ferocious costume drag for which she long has been typecast.

Not that typecasting has exactly been a negative for Dench--or for her fans. One look at her outrageously haughty performance as Lady Catherine de Bourg in the new "Pride & Prejudice," for instance, and you realize the only reason she pulls off wearing a wig the size of the Chrysler Building is because of the sheer triumph of her will.

Still, when you've donned your share of powdered wigs, been stitched into endless folds of corseted fabric, and huffed and puffed through a catalog of period pieces, as Dench has, a little good-natured costume comedy must come as a relief.

Whether this is the reason the actress is so loose and punchy in the role of Laura Henderson, the real-life widow who once used her formidable wealth and societal clout during the war years to buy in London's West End the famed Windmill Theatre, is up for grabs. Whatever the case, Dench is in her element here, steamrolling through the movie and tossing off the one-liners as if she came to have a good time.

Before the movie leaches into sentiment toward the end, her good time is infectious.

From Martin Sherman's script, the movie follows the anything-goes Henderson as she renovates the theater, seemingly out of boredom, and then decides to hire the combative Vivian Van Damm (Hoskins) to run it for her. What Van Damm imagines is something called Revudeville, a cross between vaudeville and Broadway musicals that initially is a smash. But as with any successful outing, soon the competition is on, with the surrounding theaters following suit in a mass raid of copycatting.

Facing declining ticket sales but hardly about to be outdone, Henderson brazenly decides what people need in London is a little skin. They could learn something from the French, she suggests, and goes about convincing Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest, wonderful) over lunch to allow her to have full nudity in her shows.

Initially, the man nearly chokes on the brie he's being urged to eat. But when Henderson makes the argument that a live nude figure is just as beautiful as one captured in, say, a painting at a museum, he acquiesces, albeit with a condition. The nude women in the show must never move. There can be no wobbly bits in London. They will be part of a nude tableaux, dramatically lit living works of art, nothing more.

For three-quarters of the movie, this proves to be spirited fun--everyone is having a grand time and the story moves swiftly. But then the movie's flaws begin to show.

Secondary characters who at first appear promising are disappointingly never fully realized; most of the women are reduced to just bared breasts, perhaps a good voice, but little more. Worse, the movie ultimately wants to elicit from us something deeper than laughter, as if laughter isn't enough. Instead, we get Laura's maudlin backstory, which won't be revealed here, but which allows her a wholly scripted scene amid the troops and the rubble after the London blitz nearly sinks the theater, which remains famous for never closing. That scene sucks the air out of a movie, but it hardly sinks it. The movie comes recommended for all of the fun that comes before it.

Grade: B