“Off the Rails” (M) *

I WAS under no deliberate pressure to review this girls-off-the-leash travelogue ahead of “Book of Love” seen on the same day. They just hit the screen in that order to fit into a tight timetable.

Both movies cover narrative ground similar to the same kind of auteurial trash, to much the same effect.

Q: What’s auteurial trash made from? A. Cliches. Aspiring screenwriters take note.

Two things about “Off The Rails” gave me personal warm fuzzies. There’s a lot of railway footage. My idea of a soul-pleasing experience is boarding a long train for a long, unhurried journey with my dearest one. 

Even before the front credits roll, Diana (Judi Dench) who can make reading from the Yellow Pages a joy to see and hear, is delivering an eulogy. Who’s dead? Her daughter Anna. Will we see Diana again? Not until the closing credits are about to roll and then only briefly. 

Three mature-age mourners Liz (Sally Phillips), Kate (Jenny Seagrove) and Cassie (Kelly Preston, in her final role) in not quite a front pew sing along to Anna’s adolescent daughter Maddie (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips) at the church organ playing a song composed by Anna thereby raising a few eyebrows among congregation members who’ve never heard it. 

Judi’s two brief appearances bracket the front and tail of a sort of plot. Anna has left Interrail tickets for Liz, Kate and Cassie to repeat a nostalgia trip the group made in their 20s, with a plus one for her teenage daughter. They have five days to get down to Mallorca to catch “God’s disco ball”, a twice-yearly occurrence when the sun shines through a cathedral’s stained-glass window – which they missed last time.

And its heigh-ho and away we go, for about 90 minutes of menopause chat, fallings-off the wagon, romantic dalliances and Italian mayors. If it’s feather-headed women (that coterie doesn’t include Kate or Maddie) compounding blindingly silly behaviour and scattering cliches as they go, then this is your movie. 

I saw it in an otherwise empty cinema. Had “Off The Rails” heralded its arrival ahead? 

At all cinemas

Movie review / ‘Book of Love’ (M)