Review of Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) by Ginak — 13 Aug 2016

I found this film very enjoyable, even though I know a lot about opera (I worked for an opera singer) and about Jenkins’ era, and obviously this was no historical re-creation. For me, the main problem was that Meryl Streep could not bring herself to sing really badly as she would have needed to in order to say something interesting about and be faithful to Jenkins.

Perhaps that’s why a lot of the reviews I read didn’t make a lot of sense. There was no theme here, just a nicely done movie – and that’s an achievement to be proud of. The audience was quiet and even sat through the historical material at the end (including pictures of the real Jenkins), so I give the entire cast (everyone was very good) and the director a lot of credit.

For me the problem was the script, which was well done but did not say anything interesting about art or music or singing.