Keeping Mum
This season’s fluffy Yorkshire-pudding import has a delicious setup — a murderous Mary Poppins figure — and takes it altogether too seriously. Few of the actors appear to know they’re supposed to be making a comedy. I don’t mean I wish they had mugged for the camera, but they could have done something other than playing it entirely straight. The worst offender is Kristin Scott Thomas, who stars as an unfulfilled minister’s wife. “Gosford Park,” I thought, heralded a new era for Scott Thomas: No longer encumbered by trying to win an Oscar, she was able to relax — and suddenly, she was frisky and delightful. But no, this time it’s back to the old Scott Thomas acting clinic, with the slow-burn angst and the soulful, yearning eyes and the convulsions of anguish from deep within — enough already! This is not the sequel to “The English Patient”! (Coming to a theater near you: “English Patient 2: Burn This.”) It’s a movie about a chipper old-biddy housekeeper (Maggie Smith) who kills people! Patrick Swayze, always game for self-parody, has a mildly amusing turn as Scott Thomas’ swaggering golf instructor, but the gags involving him never quite connect. And Rowan Atkinson gets more laughs in 30 seconds as the malaprop-spouting vicar in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” than he does as the beleaguered pastor in this movie. The whole thing is so … mild, even the supposed plot twists, which aren’t exactly surprising if you remember the punning title. If you want to see English comedy done right, rent a series of Atkinson’s “Blackadder” and keep away from “Keeping Mum.”