Metacritic-Rezensionen

If there is a tonal uncertainty in this comedy, then that’s because there was a tonal uncertainty in the real-life events, and the movie nicely conveys how they were at one and the same time deadly serious and Pythonically silly.

It’s just a great story, you wonder why nobody thought to make a movie before.

Following the playbook of “The Full Monty,” “Calendar Girls,” “Military Wives,” et al., Misbehaviour achieves just the right mix of farcical humor, dry wit and the obligatory dramatic moments when the light banter and sight gags give way to Poignant Confrontations reminding us there are serious undertones to this breezy romp.

Misbehaviour is intersectional to a fault, and keeping all those balls in the air is almost more than the movie can handle.

Good intentions, deft performances and vivid dollops of period style and sensibility go a long way to patch over the bumps.

The jocular, amiable tone helps deliver the more serious social history lesson throughout, even if sometimes it feels like it’s shouting just a little too loudly to wake up the dimmer students at the back of the lecture hall.

Knightley and Mbatha-Raw headline an excellent band of British talent, but the film’s focus feels sadly misguided. There’s a great story within Misbehaviour — we just don’t get to see enough of it.

Each performer tries their best to inject the material with energy and wit and verve, but Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe’s script has too many threads to weave together, leaving everyone looking a bit stranded.

Like most commercial movies about feminist history, though, it also has a toothless vision of protest and empowerment that’s doomed to fail its subject because its makers don’t (can’t) risk making the audience uncomfortable.

The film is called Misbehaviour, but a timid script belies mischief of any sort.