Keeping Mum: Critic Reviews

Dame Maggie is waggish as a mad housekeeper who finds final solutions to one family's domestic problems, and it's fun to watch swanlike Kristin Scott Thomas pretend to be a frumpy vicar's wife.

The dark British comedy Keeping Mum exudes the comfy familiarity of a vintage episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents stretched into a feature-length film.

It's a bit of amiable fun, and there's a first-rate cast who give game performances. However, I couldn't help feeling that the story needed a colder, sharper edge of steel and, quite simply, more gags.

Saves its best for last -- and God bless Maggie Smith for, well, being Maggie Smith -- but that requires sitting through a frustrating, uneven hour of sluggish preamble.

The screenplay by the novelist Richard Russo and Niall Johnson, who directed, is half hearted and too casual to be rousing. You're desperate for a surprise.

Obvious, simplistic, and never funny, Niall Johnson's movie may be useful only as real estate porn -- Cornwall and the Isle of Man never looked so super cute.

Frothy, good-hearted fun that reminds you of the kind of movies we're always complaining they don't make anymore.

Bracket out the ethical concerns of making merry as the body count mysteriously rises and Keeping Mum is an endearing hoot.

Smith, along with the rest of the cast, rises above and turns the thinly scripted dark comedy into an amusing and enjoyable British romp.

Not even such wily scene-thieves as Smith and Atkinson can salvage much of the silliness.

No heavy lifting here (except for a few stiff bodies), but Keeping Mum has a macabre merriment about it.

Smith is an absolute delight, exuding grandmotherly warmth even as she's picking her next target.

A dark comedy that isn't dark or particularly funny, Keeping Mum ends up being an exercise in heavy-handed whimsy.

Director Niall Johnson and his co-writer, Richard Russo, have shrewd eyes for quaint British mannerisms and keen ears for the eddies of their curious speech patterns.

Rather dark, decidedly English and exceedingly well played.

Dame Maggie is simply delightful (has she ever been less than wonderful?), and she has sparkling backing by Kristin Scott Thomas as Gloria and Rowan Atkinson as the good vicar.

A meek little diversion, nothing more.

The few smiles the picture generates are overcome by the revulsion of some truly disgusting deeds.

As we wait in anticipation and wait, and wait, what initially appears as subtle humour gradually emerges as very little humour at all.

The actors all strike just the right tone to carry off the black comedy.

Where Ealing comedies used to have full command of irony, Keeping Mum is weirdly clueless.

Don't expect Rowan Atkinson in full Bean or Blackadder flight: this is much more delicate Country Life comeuppance at the hands of a deliciously dark fairy godmother.

Rowan Atkinson ("Mr. Bean") plays straight-man Reverend Walter Goodfellow to Grace Hawkins (acted with keen wit by Maggie Smith) his genteel serial-killer housekeeper in this delicious British black comedy.

An insufferable British dark comedy in the tradition of other happy-horseshit classics