Staunton, Imrie put best ‘Feet’ forward
A British geezer comedy whose motto might be “Forget about death, disease and demise. Face the future!,” “Finding Your Feet” stands, runs and pivots on its dynamic duo, Imelda Staunton and Celia Imrie.
National treasures both, Staunton is best known in the U.S. for her Oscarnominated abortionist in “Vera Drake” and Dolores Umbrage, the sadistic, right-wing teacher in the Harry Potter films. She’s recently been on a musical comedy roll in London’s West End, triumphing in revivals.
Here she is front and center as Sandra, a devoted traditional wife humiliated, traumatized and dumped by her husband for his mistress.
Imrie, routinely typecast as the flirty, sexual free spirit in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and the Bridget Jones movies, is Sandra’s emotional polar opposite, her independent older sister, Bif.
Where Bif lives in a cluttered council flat, Sandra, a titled aristocrat, swans around in palatial digs that she, not a staff, maintains.
Inevitably in a dramedy like “Feet,” there will be a reconciliation and, on Sandra’s part, the realization that, yes, there is much more to life than being told how to behave by a bullying husband and keeping crumbs off the polished floor.
At Bif’s dance class, Sandra meets glamorous Jackie (“AbFab” icon Joanna Lumley) and, although no bells go ringing immediately, the nice guy she’s destined to share her life with makes his entrance.
Timothy Spall, another U.K. national treasure and Staunton’s “Vera Drake” co-star, doesn’t so much play this suitor as inhabit it.
Director Richard Loncraine is a veteran who has scored with “The Gathering Storm” on Churchill in World War II, “My One and Only” with Renee Zellweger husband-hunting with a teenaged son in tow, and Ian McKellen’s brilliant Nazi era “Richard III.”
He knows how not to overstep the sentiment, suds and assorted fleet feet and let his stars soar.