additional links
Keeping Mum
Keeping Mum is a dark British comedy which doesn’t feel like a dark comedy. It actually feels like a more traditional comedy with a couple of murders thrown in. This is helped by some standout performances. Rowan Atkinson is completely believable as a clueless bumbling vicar, Patrick Swayze is believable as a womanising letch and by far the most believable and downright scary portrayal is given by Maggie Smith as the sweet little old psychopath who disagrees with her doctors about whether or not she can kill people of which she disapproves.
The story takes place in the sleepy village of Little Wallop, but the scenery is that of generic small town English movie village. Any movie that needs to be set in a sleepy English village must be shot in the same place. Of course, with the number of people required to shoot a movie, I doubt that the village is sleepy anymore.
The plot is fairly basic. The murderer, Grace (Maggie Smith) moves in with the family consisting of the dull and boring vicar (Rowan Atkinson), the unfaithful wife (Kristin Scott Thomas), the nymphomaniac 17 year old daughter(Tamsin Egerton), and the victimised son (Toby Parkes). There is a twist, but it’s not that she kills people. That’s dealt with in the opening scene, but I won’t spoil the twist, even though I’m sure you’ll be able to guess what it is.
Dodginess
There aren’t really a lot of dodgy scenes in the movie, and the bulk of the dodginess comes from the manner in which the film is made. The film is about a little old lady who wants to help a family become closer and to live with each other better, not dodgy at all. She does this by killing people that threaten said families happiness, there’s the dodgy part. Keeping Mum manages to score a 3 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale. The dodgiest part is a tossup between the scene where Grace (Maggie Smith) hits the old guy with the shovel and the one where she hits Lance (Patrick Swayze) with the iron. The tie-breaker in this case was when she hit Lance twice with the iron. The first shot you saw coming, the second one, which I can only presume was to ensure his demise, was a bit of a shock.
Rewatchability Rating
Keeping Mum doesn’t really fit into a specific movie category. It’s not action, suspense, thriller, or romance. This makes it reasonably hard to rate on the rewatchability index. You do have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy Keeping Mum, but it may be that once you start watching it, that frame of mind will magically appear. After much deliberation, I decided to base the rating on how much I enjoyed it on rewatching it, and as a result, it scores a 4 on the rewatchability index.
Most Memorable Quote
IMDB only has 6 quotes from Keeping Mum in their database, which I find surprising. The film has any number of lines which should have been memorable, including a great sequence in which the magic word is “broccoli”. My favourite line in the movie is “Legal does not make it decent” which didn’t manage to make it onto IMDB. Go figure.
Final Thoughts
It’s really amazing how Rowan Atkinson consistently manages to play the straight man and yet still be the funniest thing in a movie. Keeping Mum is worth watching just for his performance as the boring vicar who manages to find humour. Added to this is the sweet little old psychopath and you have a film that while it may not have you rolling on the ground laughing will have you chuckling for days.