‘Downton Abbey’ is fan service for series’ audience
“Downton Abbey,” an enjoyable but uneven film adaptation of the beloved PBS series, seems designed to give fans what they want. Having allowed most characters hardwon happy endings when the show ended in 2016, series creator (now screenwriter) Julian Fellowes simply lets most of them continue to be happy for two hours.
Mostly gone is the melodrama that was so vital to the fancy soap opera’s appeal. In its place are high jinks tied to an impending visit by King George V and Queen Mary to Downton Abbey, the estate owned by the Crawley family.
News of the visit has everyone in a lather. Except the Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) and her granddaughter and protegee in aristocratic cool, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), of course.
In some ways, Fellowes’ lighter approach is welcome, even a relief. It means lady’s maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt, perpetually warm and graceful), who suffered too much and too long on the series, gets to enjoy a bit of peace with her valet husband, Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle).
It also feels like justice to see widescreen shots of the enormous castle that long-put-upon Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) now occupies with her marquess husband (Harry Hadden-Paton). Their place makes Downton look like a suburban tract house.
It would be even sweeter if we could see Mary, now married to a used-car salesman (Matthew Goode), eating her heart out over Edith’s good fortune. But Dockery wears the same impenetrably smug — and irritatingly attractive — look on her face that she did throughout the series, and Carmichael still brings anxious Jan Brady energy to Edith.
Some things never change, like the excitement that accompanies first seeing Downton (England’s real Highclere Castle once again stands in) and its grounds come into view, the experience heightened, as ever, by John Lunn’s romantic score.
With the transfer to the big screen, the visuals finally match that score’s grandeur. But the big-screen treatment also serves as a kind of whiteglove test that the film sometimes fails.
The actors appear to mug more often than they did on TV. But perhaps this is less a reflection of format than of Fellowes assigning them more broadly comic moments. Much of the movie is consumed by a downstairs plot to keep the visiting royal staff from usurping the Downton staff’s duties during the royal visit.
“Downton” was never known for its humor, beyond Violet’s withering remarks. Here, the downstairs shenanigans come off as silly, and the royal staff members are too broadly or badly drawn for us to care about their comeuppance.
Instead of hoping Daisy (Sophie McShera) and Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) will be able to cook for royalty, we wish they could just enjoy the night off, and that the cameras would follow them home. There is entirely too little of them in this film.
Granted, there are too many beloved characters to highlight in a two-hour movie.
(The Columbus Dispatch/Tribune News)