[5]

Dustin Hoffman directs this tepid comedy/drama based on Ronald Harwood’s play about geriatrics putting on a concert at a home for retired muscians. Maggie Smith stars as the facility’s newest resident. She’s nervous about seeing an old flame (Tom Courtenay) and former compadres (Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins), all of whom try to coax her out of retirement to sing once more at the concert. Hoffman makes the most of the setting, the widescreen frame, and British talent, but Quintet never took off for me. There’s too much emphasis on the relationship between Smith and Courtenay, and I just didn’t buy it. They spend half the movie avoiding each other, then they resolve their differences in one single solitary sequence, and everything is hunky-dory after that. I call shenanigans.

I’ll see anything with Maggie Smith in it, and granted, I prefer her when she’s rancorous and sharp-tongued. This is a more subdued role for Smith. She ends up playing the least interesting character. Connolly steals the show playing the sexually-charged dirty old man stereotype. Collins does a commendable job playing a character with early Alzheimer’s. The best scene in the movie, the one that connected with me the most, is one in which Courtenay gives an introductory lecture to a room full of teenagers about opera. He engages with one of the students about rap and hip/hop music, trying to parlay one generation’s preference to another’s. I felt as though the bridge between old and young could actually be made within the scene, without resorting to jokes and without disparating either generation.

With Michael Gambon.