Review of Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) by Spangle — 19 Aug 2016

Extremely safe and straight forward, this is certainly not up there with some of director Stephen Frears' more challenging works, but is a thoroughly enjoyable, sad, and funny film about a woman with a big heart who had a truly awful voice.

Meryl Streep is very good in the lead role and Hugh Grant turns in a typically charismatic performance as her doting husband. Both have received Oscar buzz for their roles. Personally, I do not know if they were quite to that level, but you never know what the rest of the year will deliver.

If either are nominated, they were certainly quite good, so it would not be totally unjustified. As for the film itself, the costume and make-up are terrific. However, the problems lie with Frears. Aside from its straight-forward nature, the film is sort of unbalanced.

It wants us to sympathize with Florence and show how ruthlessly she was mocked and laughed at by those who did not know her. Yes, she was bad, but dammit she tried and poured her heart and soul into every note.

It made her truly happy and filled her heart with joy. Who are we to mock that? Yet, then the film turns her bad singing into comedy, encouraging us to laugh at her with long, drawn out scenes of her singing with reaction shots of the rest of the cast to her singing.

These scenes are hysterical, but man oh man, does it not gel with us sympathizing with her. Are we to feel bad for Florence or just join the chorus of laughter? I have to imagine Frears wanted us to feel for her, but fails in this endeavor as the film plays more along the lines of a comedy than anything else.

While it was funny, do not get me wrong, it could have been a far more powerful film if it did not simply play into cheap laughs at this poor woman's expense. Overall, Florence Foster Jenkins is a pretty, well-acted film that simply cannot decide what it wanted to try to do.