The setting is Dublin, circa 1967. Laura Linney stars as Chrissie, who has spent the past 40 years in America, estranged from her mother. But now her mother is dead, so she returns to the old neighborhood to settle her affairs\u2014to the consternation of the departed matriarch\u2019s friends Lily (Maggie Smith), Eileen (Kathy Bates), and Dolly (a wonderful young actress named Agnes O\u2019Casey). She walks in as the trio performs a tribute song at a local charity talent show where the grand prize is a trip to the sacred French town of Lourdes. The outcast and the standbys exchange loaded words and icy glares, but soon thereafter, Chrissie discovers an apology letter from her mother, and a ticket to join her friends on their trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can pretty much guess what happens after that. Movies like this are less about surprising us with what happens\u2014Dolly\u2019s son Daniel doesn\u2019t speak, for example, and anyone surprised by how that<\/em> turns out should see more movies\u2014than with providing pleasurable performances and moments of insight. On the former score, it should be noted that Maggie Smith saying \u201cHoly Mary Mother of God\u201d is a gift<\/em>, Laura Linney continues to be one of the best in the business at playing women whose wounds have become part of their armor, and that any of us would watch an entire movie about Kathy Bates and Stephen Rea\u2019s entertainingly miserable marriage. (That said, you may spend a good chunk of the setup wondering why they\u2019re trying to convince us that Linney and Bates, separated by 16 years, are the same age.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The screenplay generally tries to do too much in too little time, in fact, providing a fully-formed subplot and attached arc for each of these women, plus little check-ins during their trip for the clueless husbands they\u2019ve left behind. All that housekeeping and box-checking doesn\u2019t leave much room for nuance; O\u2019Sullivan stages it all competently enough, though he leans too heavily on the cutesy\/pushy score (especially early on).<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/miracle3-1024x683.jpg\")
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The trouble is the script, credited to three separate writers, feeling very much like the result of a weak-willed consensus. It\u2019s a compendium of old simmering slights and resentments, tragedies that surface at a moment\u2019s notice, and so everyone gets to take their turn making their dramatic accusations and disclosures. It all feels so very formulaic, and the slimness of the end product lays that problem bare. The conflict and friction that divides these women has been sewn for decades, but the picture is performed at such a gallop that it\u2019s all made minimal and manageable, and therefore not terribly dramatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n