Flasz On Film

Synopsis: In a quiet English retirement community, four unlikely friends form the “Thursday Murder Club,” a group that meets weekly to solve cold cases. Their hobby turns serious when a local developer is found dead, and the retirees must put their wits (and quirks) to the test against a mystery that quickly proves larger than it first appeared.

It was a matter of time before The Thursday Murder Club would be adapted for the screen. In fact, it was inevitable that it would happen as soon as humanly possible. After all, the magnitude of success and celebrity Richard Osman has enjoyed on the back of this novel rivals Stieg Larsson, Gillian Flynn and probably even J.K. Rowling. 

Not every day does a first-time author get to publish his work in an auction where ten publishing houses bid for the privilege of publishing their work. It just doesn’t happen unless the author is already famous, the book in question is incredibly marketable, or both of the above. Osman had already enjoyed a fruitful career as a TV personality, comedian and a producer and his idea for a book about elderly sleuths solving a crime in a retirement home was rather promising. And the same goes for the movie, which was immediately greenlit at Amblin with Ol Parker (of the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fame) behind the wheel and with Steven Spielberg producing. Parker was eventually replaced by Chris Columbus and the movie ended up being picked up by Netflix, where you can enjoy it currently.  

And on that latter note, chances are that—just like the book—you might be in the market to like this movie if you belong to either of the following demographics: elderly fans of crime mysteries for whom Knives Out might be a bit too sassy but who might be partial to the recent Agatha Christie adaptations brought forth by Kenneth Branagh (like The Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice), aficionados of true-crime podcasts produced and hosted by minor celebrities or escapees from the mainstream media bog, and middle-aged (and elderly) connoisseurs of TV chamber dramas like The Crown and Downton Abbey who wish to spice up their viewing habits without risking a heart attack on the back of unwarranted spikes in suspense or unregulated thrills and chills. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb that if you’re at least sixty years of age or you think that Wicked Little Letters with Olivia Colman is an absolute banger—and I distinctly remember sitting through this abomination in utter discombobulated disbelief at just how many other patrons (many of whom were in fact OAPs, Old Age Pensioners) cackled like hyenas throughout the screening—you might be in for a treat.  

If, however, you are unlikely to fit amongst any of these cohorts, it might be best for you to give The Thursday Murder Club a wide berth. This is the kind of gentle-gentle moviemaking that surely guarantees that your nan will have a blast but offers very little to those who prefer their entertainment to have some more voltage. It’s not that it’s bad per se. As I can only imagine based on the movie (and at this point I don’t think I’d be giving Richard Osman’s book a shot either), the story itself just perfectly packages the rudimentary whodunnit into a feel-good narrative that is as convenient as it is saccharine. Full of inoffensive jokes and spiced up with the occasional F-bomb—but not too much; we don’t want for gran to keel over while watching this, now do we?—The Thursday Murder Club flows gracefully from one set piece to another and introduces its characters with the panache of a storyteller following a flowchart and making sure the plot makes sense and the only ends left loose are the ones he wants to leave hanging. Nobody pays too much attention to such mundane ideas as setting the story in a vaguely recognizable reality and it’s fine. It’s a part of the contract between the story and the viewer that for all I care, this retirement home in which Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan and Celia Imrie engage in their puzzle-solving and impromptu crime-fighting is just down the road from Privet Drive where young Harry Potter lived before he got into Hogwarts. Crime scenes are not too bloody, the characters all have identifiable quirks, everyone speaks in complete sentences with multiple subclauses while coming up with well-engineered one-liners on the spot. It’s all neat, convenient, polished, pitch-perfect and just nice and uplifting. Like a fairy tale with a crime scene in it. 

In short, this isn’t a movie for those of us who want cinema to unsettle, upset or challenge them in any appreciable way. The Thursday Murder Club is a movie for those who unironically ask others why they watch scary movies and how exactly can anyone find that kind of stuff entertaining in the first place. It’s not for me, that’s for sure. But my wife loved it. And she loves The Crown, Downton Abbey, and inoffensive Christie-light whodunnits. So it all checks out. And here I am wondering if it’s a good idea to show her Gone Girl, or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, both of which also qualify as murder mysteries, and see if she blows out the gasket or if she’s about to put a kibosh on the very idea of letting me choose what we watch.