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Dean (6927 KP) rated The Girl With All the Gifts (2017) in Movies
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Lee (2222 KP) rated Military Wives (2020) in Movies
Mar 9, 2020
At a UK army base, soldiers are preparing to leave for another tour in Afghanistan. As they say goodbye, we're given a chance to be introduced to the wives and families who will remain in the houses located on the base while the soldiers are away. Straight away, we get real insight into the lives of these women - trying to maintain some kind of normality, while constantly living in fear of the phone call or the knock at the door that might come at any time and turn their lives upside down. The women all vary in their experience of army life - from young, newly married wives to wives who are old hands at moving from base to base and country to country, coping without their husband for long periods of time.
Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) is married to the regiment's colonel and assumes that she is therefore superior to all the other women on the base - jumping the queue in the small on-site grocery store and generally looking down her nose at the others. Lisa (Sharon Horgan) is much more laid back than Kate, happy to just go with the flow. She has been charged with pastoral care for the wives while their partners are away, and is more than happy just to organise the odd coffee morning or a few glasses of wine rather than anything more productive and engaging for the group. With her husband away, and having to deal with a past tragedy that we learn more about as the story unfolds, Kate decides to try and poke her nose in and organise Lisa and the other wives. Consequently, Kate and Lisa clash... regularly.
After unsuccessfully trying out knitting as a suggested activity, one of the wives suggests singing. Unfortunately though, none of the women appear to be very good at singing and the bickering between Kate and Lisa doesn't really help improve them either. While Kate reads up on vocal warm-ups and learning how to conduct a choir, Lisa digs out her old electronic keyboard and is happy just to have the group try and sing along to a few old pop songs.
Military Wives does manage to follow that traditional Full Monty template I described earlier - with a mismatched bunch of inexperienced singers who eventually manage to get it together enough to be able to perform their own song at the Royal Albert Hall. However, I did feel that the emotion and the drama surrounding these women, who could lose their husband/wife at any moment, really brought something different to the movie, something which I don't feel the trailer accurately portrays. The comedy and the feel-good factor that these trailers like to put across was a lot more subtle, and as a result I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to.