The title of the second Downton Abbey film guarantees a brand new period, however in truth this can be a reheated serving of reassuringly acquainted consolation meals for followers of the collection. The identical crusty class certainties below the identical chilly, Wedgewood-blue skies; the identical mild sprinkling of xenophobia and the identical keen rating that bustles in between strains of dialogue like an over-solicitous waiter.
The story takes up the place the final image, already one thing of a redundant postscript to the tv collection, left off: widower Tom Branson (Allen Leech) marries Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton). However the Crawley household is quickly shaken by two occasions. First, fearsome matriarch Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith), whose bon mots are actually a bit bon moth-eaten however who stays one of many extra entertaining characters, reveals that she has acquired a French villa. Second, a movie crew invades Downton, inflicting a lot kerfuffle, however paying handsomely.
Within the collision between aristocracy and the world of leisure, author Julian Fellowes pays loving tribute to himself and his breakthrough movie, Gosford Park. However a plot gadget that hinges on the transition between the silent film period and the talkies is lifted slightly extra clearly from Singin’ within the Rain. It’s a comparability that does this artless cash-in no favours.
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