Florence Foster Jenkins starts today

You might try to get The Glory(??????) of the Human Voice too. It has an added bonus of four songs sung by Jenny Williams? and Thomas Burns. She isn't a bd singer but he butchers his parts terribly and he's every bit as bad as Florence. If only they could have graced (assaulted with malice?) the stage together! What a travesty it would have been. One can only dream.

 

Wouldn't waste the time or $

 

I never heard of Florence, or this movie, till CBS' "Sunday Morning" did a piece about it several weekends ago, it looks like fun. We'll probably check it out when it comes to video.

 

I can't imagine she would be too phased by bad reviews - at heart, she knew she wasn't so great. She did memorably say, after all: "Some may say I couldn't sing, but none may say I didn't sing!"

 

What a great quote!

 

This pretty much parallels my view, although perhaps I liked it a bit more than you. I thought the story might be a bit thin to hang a 110 minute movie on, but it was a fun, charming dramedy that moved at a pretty good clip. Particular kudos to Simon Helberg for his starmaking supporting performance - not being a fan of The Big Bang Theory I wasn't familiar with him before, but his performance as the pianist who's worried about what the hell he got himself mixed up in is softly hilarious.

Also: the cinema I saw it at last night was about 80% full, and at least half of those appeared to be over 60. Is that how the Streep fanbase skews these days, or just the audience for movies about wealthy dowagers set during WWII? Or movies screened on Wednesdays?

 

I just saw this last night. I liked it a lot, but wouldn't say it's a great movie. The awful singing was a lot of fun, but I'm glad that the film didn't begin by just mocking Florence. The film does a good job of humanizing Florence so she comes across as a flawed person (and we all have our flaws), not just some delusional socialite who took advantage of her money to promote herself as an artist. It was both funny and touching.

 

Interesting to compare the foreign film "Marguerite" w/ Catherine Frot in the lead role. Same story, perhaps a better film.

 

Helberg has been stealing the show on Big Bang Theory for a while now:

 

Hmm...he's playing a keyboard in the clip, and the piano in the movie..
He must know how to play keyboard instruments.

 

It looks like a pleasant movie. My wife loves Meryl Streep movies.

 

Is this a remake of another film? (I'm not saying it is therefore ipso facto bad.) I recall seeing a clip about a (foreign?) film on IIRC the same subject: a wealthy woman who sings but had a horrible voice but no one was brave enough to tell her, etc. Does any one else know anything about this? I searched the net and could not run it down.

 

@townsend You are correct! There was a French movie made just last year, called Marguerite. It won Best Actress (Catherine Frot), Sound, Costume Design, and Production Design at the Cesar Awards (France's Oscar equivalent) this past February. It had received 11 nominations in total!

Marguerite (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

 

Bluejeanbaby -- thanks. So I wasn't hallucinating on those mushrooms I ate in the backyard! Here it is at Rotten Tomatoes: Marguerite »

Seriously, since the French original got 96%, if I determine to see this movie, I will just see the original.

 

@townsend Since Marguerite seems to have been well-received in France, I wonder why the American equivalent is not doing so well, yet anyway...
Budget 19 mil
Box Office 9 mil
Those of us who have seen it on this thread like it...

 

The French movie isn't the "original". It's a fictional story based on the true story that Florence Foster Jenkins is about.

Well, for one thing it's playing in about half as many cinemas as the other movies in the top 10. Maybe good reviews and word of mouth will push it towards a wider release. Also, it's barely been out a week. Films like this don't necessarily explode right out of the gate.

 

@Dudley Morris ....So Meryl Streep's movie is more true to the story than the French one would be?

 

I would think it'd have to be, even if only because it uses the real names, incidents, and locations involved. It's lightly fictionalized of course - timelines are compressed and, as as noted earlier, the real Foster-Jenkins wasn't fatally felled by a bad review, although she was certainly upset by them - but that's true of all movies "based on a true story".

 

The movie is pretty good, but man I miss the Stephen Frears who gave us The Grifters and Dirty Pretty Things.

 

I kind of got pulled into going to it but it was a lot of fun.

Well worth seeing. Simon did a great job.

 

My wife and I watched this on Amazon Prime this afternoon, we both enjoyed it.
I didn't even realize the piano player was the Big Bang Theory guy!