Middle-of-the-Road The Duke Is Darling

People who thought Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was too cute in its portrayal of back-in-the-day, working-class life in the British Isles will probably freak out when they watch The Duke — which makes blue-collar life in the U.K. look downright adorable.

Front and center is Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), a based-on-real-life character who spent the early ’60s sending plays to the BBC, fighting for causes that occasionally sent him to the big house (like watching TV without a license, which I still can’t believe is a thing in the U.K.), getting fired from jobs, and driving his long-suffering wife (Helen Mirren) batty. Mirren’s Dorothy is the breadwinner of the household, a housekeeper for an upper-class family. Things get crazier when Bunton gets his hands on Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, stolen from the National Gallery in London. The pipe-smoking socialist soon sends letters demanding a £140,000 ransom, which will be donated to charity, while keeping the painting hidden from the disapproving missus.

There’s no better way to describe this movie — which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival two freakin’ years ago — than darling. Director Roger Michell is the filmmaker who gave us such edgy British films as The Mother (the one in which Daniel Craig sleeps with somebody’s mom, not the Bong Joon-ho Mother or the Darren Aronofsky Mother!) and Enduring Love (the one in which Daniel Craig gets stalked by Rhys Ifans). He practically gets his Mike Newell on here, turning out a comfortably saccharine movie that’ll win over your mama and your grandmama. He takes the story (provided by playwrights Richard Bean and Clive Coleman) and turns it into a kitchen-sink farce, a shallow-yet-fun-loving burlesque that, while it probably could’ve been done a whole lot better, is too fluffy and harmless to loathe. 

Broadbent and Mirren certainly aid in that, working their golden-years charm as aging Brits who are figuring out their issues — like coming to terms with the death of their teenage daughter — in their own ways. The story itself isn’t mapped out all that well, as time is also spent — or wasted, if you prefer — on the not-that-appealing subplots of the couple’s boys. One (Fionn Whitehead) is an idealist just like his dad, while the other is a fresh-out ex con (Jack Bandeira) fooling around with an obnoxious married woman.

Thankfully, The Duke is a middle-of-the-road confection that stays nice and rosy thanks to durable Oscar winners Broadbent and Mirren.