Agatha and the Midnight Murders

Somehow I got a third of the way through this debacle of a movie before I realised I may totally lose the will to live if I watched a second more. Helen Baxendale, totally miscast, did the best she could with the abysmal script, but could do nothing to improve it. The rest of the characters did nothing but annoy, and the acting in general was amateurish. The supposed comic moments were unfunny and embarrassing and the suspense was conspicuous by its absence. The occasional bad language seemed way out of character and the actual story was about as interesting as fishing. I regret every second I wasted on this - even the time spent writing this frigging review! What a waste of effort. I have been generous giving it 2 stars. Watch this at your own peril.

The opening credit/scene was so unnecessarily gruesome, I nearly turned it off right then and there. But I needn't have worried about that...it had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. I can't imagine what they were thinking it achieved.

Mind due, if I had turned it off I might have saved myself a few hours of watching mediocre nonsense.

It had the standard formula for a Christie, but that's where the similarities ended. There was very little in the way of mystery, clues or detection and rather just sudden murders, finger pointing and an ongoing manhunt.

I didn't mind some of it, but it the twists were a bit wild.

If this wasn't badged as an Agatha Chistie, it still would be a rambling poorly acted mish mash. We were actually looking forward to the ad breaks. Plodding along with a scattering of swear words, 3rd rate jokes and violent deaths doesn't make an Agatha Christie murder 'mystery'.

In an earlier review, djalloyingj-7365929 August 2021 asks how a film set in 1940 can have a rude song about Hitler's balls set to "The Bridge on the River Kwai" march theme, when "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was made many years after 1940 and the end of World War II. What djalloyingj-7365929 does not realise is that the march theme used in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is actually a much earlier military march, written by a British counterpart to America's military march king, John Philip Sousa. The original march is called "Colonel Bogey", and a little web-searching can add much detail to this, although "Colonel Bogey" seems to be a fictitious character. The naughty words, very popular with the British army, and naughty little boys, tell us that "Hitler had only one brass ball, Goering had two, but very small, Himmler was somewhat sim'lar, but poor old Goebels had no balls at all!" This may not have been historically correct, but was very satisfying to sing very loudly. The idea that Agatha Christie, in real life, might find herself in a real murder scene, and be able to use her fictionally honed mystery-solving skills to solve the mystery is sufficient to motivate "Agatha and the Midnight Murders", and other (fictional) murder mysteries that do not involve Christie's usual sleuths, such as Poirot and Marple.

Well, it's easy to see why the world wants more and more Agatha Christie - and here we have some fairly good fan fiction. Good acting and fairly good dialog. Though, here I have a slight problem with F-bombs being dropped here and there. Fortunately beeped out on PBS. Not really the sort of language one would expect Agatha Christie to use. At least the graphic set scenes that seem all to common in New adaptations has been left out. Though there is one or two scenes of some gore, but, seriously, if you've called Agatha Christie's novels "cozy" you haven't been paying attention. Pretty good plot twist. It'll pass in the dark if you give it a shove. OR, you could return to David Suchet as Poirot.