St. Trinians :: Wessex Scene Online

St. Trinians

23rd January 2008
Kate Davies

About this film

Title	St. Trinian's
Director	Oliver Parker
Release Date	21 December 2007
Certificate
Genres	Comedy
Our Rating	3.0/5.0

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St Trinian’s started as a series of cartoons by Brit cartoonist Ronald Searle and was later made into a quartet of films in the 50’s and 60s.

Featuring the original naughty schoolgirls, pupils drank, gambled and smoked (wild), and the teachers weren’t much better. The cartoons also showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or were the victims of violent team sports. Enid Blyton, this was not.

The noughties St Trinian’s sees the school in bad-debt and facing closure; the head teacher Miss Fritton (Everett) can’t find the cash to save the school’s bacon, so the girls (who are played by the likes of Lily Cole and Mischa Barton, amongst others) band together, using their ingenuity to save the school from bankruptcy. A solution presents itself in the form of a heist to steal and sell a famous painting, with the help of cockerney wheeler dealer Flash Harry (Brand). Can they pull it off? Will St Trinian’s survive to see the dawn of a new term, or will the girls face the prospect of going to a real proper school? Very silly indeed, but in the tradition of St Trinian’s, so it should be.

Much of the films hype has centred around it’s all-star cast and there are some good performances here; supermodel Lily Cole proves she’s not just a pretty face, while relative newcomer Gemma Arterton does a great job of headgirl come femme fatale Kelly. It’s always nice to see British talent. Russell Brand (on whom I have my very own schoolgirl-style crush) is also an enjoyable addition to proceedings, though he’s not in it for long enough if you ask me. Not all the big names roped in were entirely necessary; the less said about Mischa Barton the better.

Having not seen the original films, I do wonder whether this does them justice. It’s not that it’s particularly awful… in fact it has all the components to be rather good; but somehow it just doesn’t pull it off. It felt like watching a really good BBC telly special (actually, an ITV one… Girls Aloud are in it), rather than a big-screen must-see. The cast is impressive (there will be many instances where you’ll go ‘ooh there’s Stephen Fry/Rupert Everett/Rupert Everett in drag etc etc’) but probably not enough to keep you suitably enthralled for the full 101 minutes of schoolgirl japes and hi-jinks.

If you do head to the cinema for this, a word of caution. It’s a little too long, a little too silly and the soundtrack features far too much Girls Aloud. Unapologetically girly, this is a chick-flick (sorry, I do hate that word) that your little sister, or maybe a mother or other female relative who enjoyed St Trinian’s the first time round might like to see with you as a nostalgic trip down memory lane. But it’s not as good, nor does it feature as much Russell Brand, as the hype made out. Hmmph.