Synopsis:

Guinevere Pettigrew, a middle-aged London governess, finds herself unfairly dismissed from her job. An attempt to gain new employment catapults her into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse.

Brian's Rating: C : This is a period movie set in London during London right before World War II.  The story follows the day of a woman named Guinevere Pettigrew who scams her way into the position of a social secretary for a day to get herself off the street.

Immediately, she is embroiled in high-society social intrigue, specifically in the middle of sorting out the love life for her client, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams).  This involves juggling three boyfriends, with mixed motivations for each one.

This movie is billed as a comedy, but the only funny parts are watching the antics of Amy Adams as she tries to present her flighty perspectives on her different men.  She does a good job as an actress in this film, and even has to "get real" for one scene, where the viewer finally gets to see the true character.

Amy Adams is the only one who can be excused for the terrible British accents in this film, due to the fact that her character came from Pittsburgh.  The rest of the supporting cast is mediocre, and the flow of one scene to the next is a bit choppy.

The ending was downright terrible, taken right from the cookie cutter mold that is responsible for all cliche endings.

It was an OK movie, but nothing I would recommend to anybody.

The Freak's Rating: D+ : Movies require a musical score to succeed, and the lack of an interesting one in Miss Pettigrew is unforgivable.  Silence, as opposed to the ads before movies roll in the theater would have you believe, is not golden.  It is the cinematic equivalent to dead air from a disc jockey.  Pacing in a film is set to this score as well as dialogue.  If you have flat dialogue, no action sequences and zero score, you will find yourself checking your watch a number of times during a film, a sure sign of a dud.

Amy Adams is one of my favorite actresses.  She shined in Junebug and was great in Enchanted, but her talent is lost in a predictable story arc and average direction.  Frances McDormand has dropped from an A+ actress with Fargo to a solid C with this role.  MP is a decent movie at best, suffering tragically from the pacing bug and never recovering.  A whimsical score would have pushed this far further on my scale.  Even Adams can't save it.

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