Review: Rejoice! 'Downton Abbey' the movie is a two-hour episode – with another happy ending
After six years of upstairs-downstairs intrigue and will-they-won’t-they romance, “Downton Abbey” fans already got a satisfying denouement back in 2015. But now the Crawley clan is back in a big-screen version that picks up where the transatlantic TV hit left off, and we get to say goodbye all over again.
Also titled “Downton Abbey,” the film (★★★½ stars out of five; rated PG; in theaters nationwide Friday) introduces several new characters – including their majesties King George V and Queen Mary – and packs a season’s worth of plot into two hours, with plenty of pageantry along the way to yet another round of (mostly) happy endings.
Is it merely “decadent fan service,” as a recent Entertainment Weekly headline put it? Well, maybe. But so was “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” the Shakespeare comedy written to indulge Queen Elizabeth’s affection for the portly rapscallion Falstaff.
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If there's an indispensable figure in “Downton Abbey,” it’s Violet Crawley, the imperious Dowager Countess of Grantham. She’s a stock character (think Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest”), but Maggie Smith elevates stereotype to archetype with her tart retorts, half-suppressed guffaws and Gateway Arch eyebrows.
Now that she and cousin Isobel are BFFs, Violet needs a new frenemy, and thus Smith gets an old fencing partner in Imelda Staunton, fellow professor emeritus at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She plays yet another Crawley cousin, Lady Maude Bagshaw, who wouldn’t be welcome at Downton at all if she weren’t lady-in-waiting to the queen.
Ah, yes, the royals. Their tour through Yorkshire is the master domino that triggers parallel subplots and lets fan-favorite characters show off their trademark charms, quirks and flaws – and maybe, just maybe, propels them toward unfamiliar territory.
Called out of retirement to coach Team Downstairs through the game of their lives, newlywed butler Carson (Jim Carter) looks like a tomcat with a mouthful of mouse as he struts down the lane to reclaim his rightful place in the house. But his victory lap is barely begun when servants from Buckingham Palace sweep in like arrogant feds taking over a crime scene from the local yokels.
It wouldn’t be “Downton Abbey” without some melodrama, and there’s plenty more to come, from a lonely princess (Kate Phillips) considering a scandalous divorce to a rakish stranger who initiates Thomas (Robert James-Collier) into the nascent homosexual underground.
Despite such nods to social progress, it also wouldn’t be “Downton Abbey” if it weren’t a gauzy apologetic for the English class system.
Through all the skillfully juggled subplots, the overarching conflict has always been the family’s quest to keep hold of Downton Abbey – and thus preserve their role as the heart of the community, envied and adored by all – while also keeping up with the march of modernity.
Sure, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) can be tone deaf and defensive in his patriarchal privilege, but he always comes around in the end, just like any goofy sitcom dad. If there’s a political message, it’s don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That may go against the progressive grain of contemporary pop culture, but it’s an essential ingredient in “Downtown Abbey’s” escapist formula. Why would you keep spending time with the Crawleys if you didn’t actually like them?
And wouldn’t you just love to hear Lady Violet’s answer to that?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ‘Downton Abbey’ review: We get to say goodbye all over again
