So, I have this thing where, if I know a movie is based on a book I have access to, I try to read the book first before I watch the movie. Sometimes that pays off. Sometimes it doesn’t. I did have a copy of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, the first in a series of mysteries about the title group’s efforts to move from solving cold cases in their spare time in a retirement community to solving more recent murders that happen in their area. I found the novel charming and fun, and the movie has a rather engaging cast, led by Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie as the title club.
I mean, it’s a Netflix movie. Those can be fun.
Retired nurse Joyce (Imrie) is asked to consult on a case that the Thursday Murder Club in the Coopers Chase retirement community is working on. The group, consisting of former government agent Elizabeth (Mirren), former trade unionist rabble-rouser Ron (Brosnan) and retired psychologist Ibrahim (Kingsley) have been down a member since one of the founders had to be moved to hospice care. Joyce takes to the group immediately even if she is on probationary status,. But then, one of the development’s co-owners, Tony (Geoff Bell) is found bludgeoned to death in his own home, allowing the other owner, Ian (a particularly sleazy David Tennant) to have full control of Coopers Chase, allowing him to tear the whole place down and put in luxury flats instead.
Naturally, a recent murder, particularly one that happened nearby, suits the Thursday Murder Club just fine, especially as Tony may not be the only murder victim. The Club does have a source to both give and get information in the form of new cop PC Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie), but there are other problems as Ron’s son Jason (Tom Ellis) , a former pro boxer, is a prime suspect, and the other biggest suspect is a criminal leader who had disappeared years ago without a trace. But with Elizabeth’s connections, Ron’s willingness to break rules for the common good, Ibrahim’s intelligence, and Joyce’s enthusiasm, it may be only a matter of time before the Thursday Murder Club can solve the big case.
So, I said above that I often read books before watching a movie, and this time around, I may have had a personal record in the amount of time in which I finished the book and then watched a movie in that it was only a couple hours apart. I might have been better off waiting at least a couple days because Osman’s novel is a rather charming piece of work, full of gentle humor and a lot more nuance than the movie presents. Joyce, in the novel, is more of a co-lead with Elizabeth while here she’s shoved off more to the side. That gives more story and screen time to Ron and Ibrahim, especially Ron, but I think it comes at the expense of a lot of the other character work in the novel. I don’t expect the movie to cover every suspect and subplot, but the fact that the lead detective in the case is dumbed down considerably for the movie makes for a more cliched and rote experience. There isn’t much here that I don’t think I haven’t seen in a dozen other movies, and that probably comes about in large part thanks to the directing of Chris Columbus.
But really, I can’t expect the movie to cover every plot and character from the novel. That’s asking too much. How did the work turn out here? Well, it’s fine, and not much more than that. There were a few good original jokes–far too many I recognized from the novel–and the old pros in the various leads, plus others like Jonathan Pryce and Richard E. Grant, certainly lend the movie some gravitas, but I kept thinking they all, Mirren especially, deserved better material than this. This may be a case where reading the novel hurt my enjoyment, but then again, I can’t remember the last time I really enjoyed a Chris Columbus movie.
Grade: C
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