Every year, you get that one dullard of a movie that critics goo all over, showering it with undeserved praise and ushering it into the awards season to help muck things up for the really cool films. For 2001, that movie would be Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, the most overrated film of the year.
If Gosford Park should take Oscar nominations away from the likes of Mulholland Drive, Memento or Freddy Got Fingered, for that matter, it would be a shame. Packed with a large cast acting stuffy and doing nothing interesting, it represents Altman in mediocre mode.
When Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), invite seemingly everyone in the acting world to their English country house for a holiday in 1932, it sets the stage for what looks to be a funny satire of upper-class society, while also studying the dynamics of the overlooked servants living downstairs.
The likes of Maggie Smith, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe, Alan Bates and Stephen Fry crowd the screen in what gradually degenerates into a predictable murder mystery that, while trying to be an homage to Agatha Christie, winds up being as engaging as your average Scooby Doo video. While it’s billed as a comedy, and the TV commercials blast critics’ quotes saying this movie is funny, I assure you it’s no laugh machine.
Altman manages some decent passages, as do his performers, but there’s nothing to get all steamed up about. I liked a vicious goose-hunting sequence that winds up being rather humorous, and Maggie Smith is good as the pampered elder stateswoman bitching about marmalade. But the Ryan Phillippe subplot about an actor researching the servant life is a dud, as are most of the side stories involving the help, played by the likes of Bates, Owen and Emily Watson.
This is a film that, while you can’t point out a single bad performance—even Phillippe appears quite competent—it’s also difficult to point out a single performance that stands out or impacts the viewer on many levels. That’s because it’s an Altman ensemble piece, where everyone is supposed to blend together equally and not hog time.
That said, I am not a huge Altman fan, having enjoyed less than 50 percent of his body of work. For every M*A*S*H, there’s a tedious actors’ workshop like Nashville, or even worse, Prêt a Porter (Ready to Wear), designed for stars to ramble without the help of that thing called a cohesive script. It took weeks for me to get over the lethargy induced by Kansas City, with Jennifer Jason Leigh annoying the crap out of Harry Belafonte—and me—for two hours.
When it comes to ensemble performance, check out Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, where each and every actor’s contribution is unique and makes an impression, yet they come together as a unit. Just about everything being put on screen during Gosford Park is forgettable and interchangeable, with no standouts.
All that said, Gosford Park is not nearly Altman’s worst (that honor goes to Prêt a Porter). It’s just much ado about nothing, and it’s surprising that the film isn’t better with the acting talent on hand. It’s Clue meets Sense and Sensibility, minus Emma Thompson and the wily Tim Curry.
Gosford Park is a case of capable performances, decent cinematography and set design and a loose directing style combined with a bland script for something not too entertaining. Critics have been going nuts for the thing, but I see no need to ever watch it again. I’d rather be watching Altman’s Popeye.