Judi Dench trots out her patented mix of steel and twinkle one more time, for a movie that is pleasant but disposable.
This time, she plays Laura Henderson, a widow struggling to figure out what to do with herself in 1937 London. She buys the Windmill, a run-down theater, and hires Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) to produce musical revues there. The show's a success at first, but after all the other London theaters copy it, the box office begins to sag.
So Laura decides to bring something new to the London stage -- nudity. She convinces the Lord Chamberlain (a dryly witty performance by Christopher Guest) that if the women don't move while on stage, then their nudity can be considered artistic, like paintings or statues.
There's lots of bickering between Dench and Hoskins, and we get to see several of the show's nude tableaux and musical numbers (Will Young plays the show's leading tenor, and his numbers are very entertaining). Dench gets a big "I'd like an Oscar nomination, please" speech late in the movie (and in a weak year for leading actress roles, it worked).
But everything about the movie is so ephemeral and lightweight that it barely registers on the mind while you're watching it, and in a week, I can't imagine that I'll remember a thing about it. It'll be a harmless way to kill an evening if you stumble across it on TV, but it's not worth making the effort to go to the theater or rent a DVD.
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