Review: THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB – Exactly What You Think It Is
The screen adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club has a very specific audience in mind – and it’s an audience that will likely be very satisfied with Chris Columbus’ comedy murder mystery. It’s a film aimed at the older end of the audience spectrum, and it’s crafted and executed with precision for their wants and needs.
You don’t need to have read Osman’s book to know what character and plot beats will be coming your way, but with a cast led by Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie, you can be sure that it will be an enjoyable – if hardly ground-breaking experience.
Four members of the Coopers Chase retirement home spend their Thursday afternoons playing amateur sleuths, solving cold cases in their idyllic country setting. However, when one of the home’s co-owners, Ian Ventham (David Tennant), is murdered, the quartet take it upon themselves to solve the crime.
Played for laughs (well, until the end) and with plenty of English country charm, The Thursday Murder Club feels like an expensive Sunday night detective show. Imagine if ITV’s Midsomer Murders suddenly had a spin-off with a $30 million budget and a cast of A-list actors. There’s fun to be had, but there’s little jeopardy in this entertaining mystery romp. This is essentially Mirren, Brosnan, Kingsley and Imrie enjoying a summer acting job while reminding Hollywood that they may be over 70, but they can still command the screen (as if that was ever in doubt). At one point in their careers, they’ve all played variations of these characters, but that doesn’t make them any less charming.
A supporting cast that includes the aforementioned Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Richard E. Grant, and Paul Freeman offers up an impressive list of actors – but even with a robust running time of two hours, it somehow feels like some of the names have been given short shrift. You get the feeling that it might have been easier to turn Osman’s 400-page novel into a two or three-part mini-series. Relegating the likes of Richard E. Grant to a single brief scene feels criminal – no matter how pivotal it may be to the plot.
Perfectly entertaining Sunday afternoon fodder, The Thursday Murder Club may lack originality, but it’s enjoyable enough all the same – and a follow-up with the same cast certainly wouldn’t be unwelcome. And seeing how Chris Columbus kicked off the big-screen Harry Potter franchise from J.K. Rowling’s books, I’d imagine the chances of at least one more instalment from The Thursday Murder Club are rather high indeed.
