3 Short Paragraphs: St. Trinians

 2007, Oliver Parker, Barnaby Thompson (Johnny English Reborn) -- Amazon

This is an oldie I should clean out, as we lean into 2021. We watched this during The Pause of 2020, after a few heavy weeks of the Pandemic weighing down on us, and it looked like something silly and British and light hearted. Also, Gemma Arterton doing a Gothy look. Rawr. 

It is the latest film in a series of films, since the 50s, based on a gag comic strip from the 40s, about a girls boarding school where the most insane things happen -- delinquency, deaths and other forms of mayhem, from both the girls and headmistresses. This movie, some 20 years after the last, is considered just another in the series, not a reboot nor resurrection. To us, it was just a typically gonzo, wacky British comedy.

There are hints of a caper flick here, the formula for many school based ensemble movies, where something is going to close the school down, and the kids have to put aside their differences to save the school. But really, the movie is just about showing us these wacky kids doing wacky things, such as selling bathtub vodka, prostituting themselves, blowing things up and just being the bad seeds that only St. Trinian's seems to be able to deal with. And there is Rupert Everett playing the headmistress, for no reason other than to be wacky. Maybe cross dressing actors was a thing in the earlier movies? The flick isn't terrible, but nor does try and be anything more than nostalgic for something I am completely unaware of. I think this movie wanted to be a Revenge of the Nerds meets Kinky Boots but was more like a mockbuster of such.