Cinema Hype

I had to know, going into Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, that it couldn’t possibly live up to the way I’d hyped it. All the ingredients were there—Amy Adams, silly period dialogue, and Lee Pace in a tux—but one can’t just go around proclaiming the rise of American cinema (which, okay, isn’t doing so badly in the first place) with one smallish-budget movie. And, you know? I was right. But I wasn’t (too) disappointed.

Miss Pettigrew is not the grand revival of American screwball comedy that I’d been hoping for; the structure is right, but the script is too loose and draping to capture the rhythm and preciseness of true screwballity—especially toward the beginning, there’s a strange sense that the audience is charging ahead and then waiting for the next joke. Whether rapid-fire laughs were the intent of the writers isn’t clear, but either way, they don’t quite get there.

What emerges instead is a film full of sweet moments and strong emotional values—gently funny and occasionally silly, with surprisingly deep emotional roots. The characters themselves are certainly earnest. Miss Pettigrew herself (Frances McDormand) is quick-thinking and consistent, with a distaste for frivolity; love interest Michael (Pace) only wishes everyone (his lady love especially) would take love as seriously as he does. Even flighty Delysia LaFosse (Adams), who juggles three men and the attendant chaos with a wink and a smile, is decidedly unsophisticated. In a way, Miss Pettigrew is a propaganda film in support of the very earnest and the very poor: nearly without exception, to be poor is to be noble and to rise above the petty games and deceptions of the upper class.

Part of what lifts Miss Pettigrew above the mild ungainliness of its script is its cast, which (unsurprisingly) doesn’t falter. McDormand has left us (”us” being “the movie-going public”) for far too long, and she is wonderfully subtle as Miss Pettigrew. If it’s possible, Adams threatens to overdo her wide-eyed ingenue act (though the contrast makes McDormand look even better), but tones herself down into a state of her standard loveability by the end of Act I, so that’s a relief. Ciaran Hinds is endearingly honest—there’s that word again!—as lingerie designer Joe, and Pace, it must be said, outdoes himself in the area of desperate, scruffy, musically-inclined suitors (he sings!, and I’ll leave it at that).

So maybe this movie isn’t going to be on the docket for Oscar 2009. Maybe the razor wit isn’t quite as hairsplitting as one might hope. Maybe another comedy this spring (ahem, Leatherheads) will give me what I’m looking for, or maybe we’ve simply moved away from comedies that drop and spin. But Miss Pettigrew can hang out with me whenever she wants.

(Extra fun fact, courtesy of IMDB: I’d completely forgotten that Frances McDormand used to narrate the show State of Grace, with Alia Shawkat and Mae Whitman—Maeby Funke and Ann Veal, respectively, on Arrested Development. Now there are two different, but excellent, shows. Heh.)

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Miss Pettigrew, Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Lee Pace, Ciaran Hinds, comedy, screwball comedy, movie review, State of Grace, Alia Shawkat, Mae Whitman, Arrested Development