Although the Arab world has joined in with the ‘Women’s Institute’ in booing and cat-calling the Prime Minister when ever he hijacks every opportunity to spin this country into dizzy anarchic oblivion, its was the old fuddy duddy ladies that really showed him up to just what a plonker he is.
The anachronistic quaint organisation, the backbone of our traditional middle classes!, is also the bedrock for an enjoyable little movie here; based an equally quirky true story. And in truth’ Full Monty 2’ for girls!.

Every year we get the “Big British Film”, usually with Hugh Grant or a Northern theme; as yet not paired up thank God!, pacifically devised to tap into an American audiences perception on how they imagine us stuffy Brits .’ Calendar Girls’ was that 2003 flick!.
Unlike ‘Four Weddings’ and ‘Bridget Jones’, this is based on a true story as most of you will know, so avoided feeling like three tiresome Middle Class situation comedies stuck together with Tescos ‘super-grip’ glue like the above.

Yes some English girls do have big bottoms and go to lots of weddings looking for suitors and Chardonnay, but they don’t prefer Colin Firth or Hugh Grant!.
Calendar Girls is refreshing because it avoids all those things the Americans find funny and we don’t; Firth going through a plate glass window for starters. Ok that is funny!. But unlike the tedious ‘Full Monty’, that really is a one hour TV drama at best you know guys, Calendar Girls has genuine wholesome belly laughs!.

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Chrissie (Helen Mirren) and Annie (Julie Walters) slouch on the back seats of the local Napely W.I, bored with making jam and knitting tea cosies. Chrissies mission to liven up things with vodka tasting evenings and cutting very big corners in the national sponge finals are not everyone’s cup of Darjeeling!, especially the branch manager in Hillary.

When Annie’s likeable husband (John Alderton) is struck down by cancer, Chrissie gathers the moment and decides to lift everyone’s spirit by raising enough money to buy the local hospital, where he died, a new waiting room sofa.

Inspired by a naughty Pirelli on the local mechanics workshop wall, and Hillary’s insistence that this year’s calendar should be the churches of the moors….she decides to make their own version, against the reputation of the ultra conservative Institute. All she has to do now is find twelve W.I members amongst the octogenarians who will strip off for England!..

Being the sexiest and most confident, Chris will be January to get the ball rolling. Together with Miss February’, best friend ‘Annie’ rallies the girls, invigorated by the rebellious project and break from the norm.
But they need a photographer to do the shoot and further more the courage to strip off their aged and weathered bodies in front of him or her.

After trawling the area for the right person, they settle for a part time snapper ‘Brian Harris’,(Phillip Glennister), a porter working at their local hospital who was caring for Annie’s husband.
After literally whipping of their bras for this liberating moment in their repressed lives; two hours before the shoot ,(leave no strap marks!); reluctant at first to bare all, slowly their inhibitions come down with their draws and the project is complete!.
Relived and uncomfortable husbands gathering in the local, also gasp a sigh of relief as Brian announces” Congratulations its a calendar!”.

Thinking they wouldn’t sell that many, Chris and Annie get a printing deal for 500.And with the accompanied press conference seemingly a non goer, it all looks lost. But when the two girls are told they in the wrong function room, the doors to next room reveal an explosion of the world’s media and a veracious appetite for their enchanting story.
It seems the calendar sold out in ten minutes and the twelve women who were making jam last week are about to be very famous indeed!..........

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The inevitable and worthy short about the real girls who posed for the calendar is fun as you can put a face to the characters acted out. The real ’Chrissie’, Helen Mirrens character, is a delight as is her partner in crime who Julie Walters plays in Annie. A real broad non nonsense Northern gal, which is where the real romance of the film lies.
Believe it or not their calendar actually sold twice as many copies a month than the original sexy Pirelli ones!.

Apparently the film didn’t look at the darker side of the story in that one of the girl’s husbands ran off with another, causing a major fracture in the real cleaner girls W.I group. Saying that though this little extra was just what is needed and along with the ‘deleted scenes’, one which is hilarious and really should have hit the cutting room floor.

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Yes director Cole does linger on those iconic Yorkshire Dales with dramatic sweeping shots, narrowly avoiding flat caps and whippets God Bless him. But the warmth of this really makes it more pleasing than the usual over rated domestic cliché comedy crap with not a Sheffield sink estate in sight!.
90% of British films never get released for various reasons, mostly financial and the fact they are dire, so it’s pretty cool for all of us that this one actually did before Gordon Brown slammed the loop hole shut……

I think Helen Mirren is Gods mistress on this mortal coil as she has that ageless beauty and smouldering sexuality that just won’t go away. OK her delicious baps have slipped like melting plastic since ‘Caligula’, but the girl still looks good as Miss January!. And she’s certainly not afraid to whip them out on film as the Romans will testify to.
The remaining girls are a collection of sitcom mums and jobbing actresses you have seen alongside Anton Rodgers and Geoffrey Palmer many times before; and really rather brave to do what the real gals did.

Director ‘Nigel Cole’ portrays how traditional women like these are cruelly obsolete when the babies have come and the black as night crows, long since crawled across their eyes.
Yes the actresses are sexier than the original 12, seen in the excellent DVD extras, but boy are they great as a collective telling a delightful tale. Mirren is especially good as the feisty naughty school girl refusing to surrender to her farting dust days.

The cast here really purvey that need to hold onto to the good things in life like a solid family life and society, yet still try to have fun and games when the opportunity arrives to repel those advancing years. When your husband dies of cancer and leaves you alone and exposed on the bitter moors, unlikely to find love again, it’s good to have friends around you and to keep hope alive.

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Looking at this you would think it would only appeal to a certain age demographic and social class. OK I had that initial misconception and in truth im heading that way, but I really do feel this movie has universal appeal, if just for Mirren and Julie Walters engaging performances.
The discretely placed buns and W.I tee cosies for the calendar shoot are funny as they are painfully reflective to us all that the female form doesn’t last as long as guys.

QUOTEABLES:“You’re nude in the ‘Telegraph’ dear; Can you pass me the quail eggs!”.

The act of stripping and exposing ones self is clever in the way it adheres to the films under lying theme of that way cancer eventually gets or affects us all. Like age, there’s nothing we can do when the ‘Big C’ comes and we should seize the day as Robin Williams once said ( in his only decent movie) and take life on.
We are all equal naked, as our material possessions and dignity are stripped away. In the movie there’s a scene where one of the posher girls reveals tattoos and a rather indiscrete tale of her time in a biker’s band. But somehow I think there’s a skull and cross bones on Tony Blair’s ass!.

There just about everything in this movie including a surreal cameo with the rock band ‘Anthrax ‘,singing the Women’s Institute’s them tune in ‘Jerusalem with the girls church organ player in L.A. Actually there’s quite a few unexpected delights here as its no where near as dull as it looks by subject matter. The deleted scene where Helen Mirren races after a hearse,’ League of Gentlemanesque!’ is wonderfully dark and would have been the seeds for a whole new movie!.

So after another gruelling review of spellcheckers and hopeless grammar I would like to inform the ladies that I am available for the Christmas nude calendar here!.lol.