Cashing in on the current wave of films targeted at a more senior audience, most recently (and lucratively) powered by THE KING’S SPEECH and THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut QUARTET is shakily handled and amateurishly assembled, its supremely talented cast besmirched by a lowest common denominator screenplay. Stepping behind the camera for the first time, Hoffman attempts to create a genial slice of British escapism, in which a cast of heritage actors play thinly sketched parodies of themselves.

Adapted by Ronald Harwood from his own play, the film is set in and around the tranquil haven of Beecham House, a retirement home for musicians, whose residents are practicing for an annual concert celebrating Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday.  The friendship shared by three long-term denizens, the mannered Reggie (Tom Courtenay), Cecily (Pauline Collins) who is dwindling ever closer to dementia, and the twinkly-eyed old flirt Wilfred (Billy Connolly), is ruptured by the arrival of bitter diva Jean Horton (Maggie Smith, practically rehashing her bitterly droll role in TV’s DOWNTON ABBEY).

Soured by her unwilling admittance to Harwood and her tricky hip, Jean cuts an acidic figure full of pent up rage and repressed hostility towards the mistakes of her past, which saw her break Reggie’s heart with an affair. Slowly stitching her way into the equilibrium of the house, Jean considers a change of heart when asked to sing once more with her three old vocal partners, building bridges and coming to terms with the happiness age brings in the process.

Replete with […] sunny perceptions about the autumn years of one’s life, QUARTET knows its target demographic.

Replete with obvious gags about Reggie’s ignorance to Lady Gaga and Hip Hop when faced with an audience of rapping school kids, and sunny perceptions about the autumn years of one’s life, QUARTET knows its target demographic. With a storyline secondary to Hoffman and Harwood’s vested dissection of the undying psychological vehemence of performance, placing the cast on a pedestal, the film is crowd-pleasing at a price. The novelty of venerated stars using swear words and subverting their reputation as treasured thespians glosses over a thin premise that abandons the more interesting aspects it begins to set up, such as the inner hierarchies established at Beecham and the threat of closure.

Not even Michael Gambon, Sheridan Smith and Andrew Sachs can rescue Hoffman’s first stint as a filmmaker: saggy but well meaning, QUARTET hides behind a predictabe narrative and a set of light-hearted caricatures denied their dignified senility.

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