Reviews

[thunder]

First review from No Spoiler Reviews:
https://nospoilerreviews.com/2022/01/06 ... ws+Twitter

They thought it started well, but falls apart. So it's not a very good review.

[Anniemouse]

[Helen8]

this suspended moment is neither likely to transport away from the TV nor to the multiplex.

I’d say wait for it to find safe harbour on a prepaid streaming channel first.
Wow! Harsh!

[thunder]

Little White Lies review:
https://lwlies.com/reviews/operation-mincemeat/

This review was a bit better than the other one.

Jason Isaacs is good value as Admiral John Godfrey, the preening bureaucratic overseer whose hand is forced into commissioning this operation and who secretly hopes it falls.

[Helen8]

Well. I finally found the time to watch this. I found it very interesting. I like that there was so much humor (intended or otherwise) surrounding the elaborate plot. With so many things that could have gone wrong along the way, it's incredible that it worked,

Loved hearing Jason's posh voice (shades of Lucius).

I'll be forced to watch it a second time with DH.

[Hilary the Touched]

I did the contractually obliged viewing with family, and all agreed that JI was wonderful--but the movie was, in a word, goofy.
The notion that the entire continued existence of a free Europe hinged on this room full of sniping man-babies passive-aggressively arguing over the attentions of one coworker was pretty discouraging.
I was struck by a couple of things about the irresistible romance between Colin Firth's character and Kelly McDonald's. First, we're supposed to recognize that his wife left him out of caution but also his "difficulty," presumably emotional distance/intimacy issues? But then he's mooning around after this other woman like three weeks after his family's departure?? That felt like a mighty quick surrender.

We were also shown Penelope Wilton's character as out of circulation, because she's old and past it. She's 75; Firth is 61; McDonald is 46 years old.
Which is to say, the age difference between Firth and the two women is virtually identical--but while his pursuit of McDonald was almost inevitable, Wilton wasn't even in the picture. While I acknowledge that was entirely historically appropriate, it still irked me.

Was Ian Fleming serving in a defense office or hanging out at his frat house? And speaking of people who don't do very much work, why did it take any more than 20 minutes to work up this love letter? They had to go out dancing?? Come on.

Like it was a really intriguing story, but the amount of tangential stuff that got hung on it seemed gratuitous and silly.

[servalan]

I'm interested in your comments, Hilary. (I did my review in the UK premiere thread.)

There was obviously a lot of padding in the film relative to RL when it comes to personal relationships. It had not occurred to me till you gave their ages, but all three actors you name were obviously playing much younger characters than themselves. IRL Colin Firth's character's wife came home and they stayed together until one of them died, so if he had a wandering eye or not is unrecorded.

I'm not even sure what a frat house is, it sounds very American! I looked up Fleming and he studied "briefly" at the Universities of Munich and Geneva.

Maybe the old 1956 film was nearer to RL? (It doesn't seem to feature Ian Fleming.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was

[Hilary the Touched]

Thanks, Servalan--I guess my biggest peeve was with what you rightly described as "padding." I expected a story that focused on the war and the importance of this operation to Allied success, and much of this movie seemed trivial or irrelevant. Perhaps the filmmakers felt that the story was too thin to support a movie without all the embroidered "human interest," but a lot of that felt false to me.
A "frat house" is a place on a college/university campus dedicated to use by members of a fraternity. I can't say anything much about those, as they remain an alien concept to me, but the houses are typically occupied by a bunch of 18- or 19-year-old boys who are mostly unsupervised and get up to a multitude of distasteful activities--don't know if you've ever watched Animal House, but that's the classic depiction.

I just meant that every time we caught sight of him he didn't seem especially concerned with anything military!

[Marie]

TOGA PARTY!!!! And yes - they really happened.

[servalan]

I haven't watched Animal House all the way through because it's just the sort of thing I hate - however I have watched Monsters University.