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‘spooks: the greater good’: film review.

Peter Firth and 'Game of Thrones' alumnus Kit Harington star in Bharat Nalluri's espionage thriller, a spin-off from the long-running BBC drama shown as 'MI-5' Stateside.

By Neil Young

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The contrasting specters of Jason Bourne and George Smiley hang heavy over Spooks: The Greater Good , which semi-successfully translates the BBC’s hit spy series to the big screen three years after its tenth and final season. While more satisfactory as a Le Carré variant than as a Ludlum clone — thanks largely to the world-weary gravitas of top-billed veteran Peter Firth — there’s only the ghost of a chance of this so-so mid-budgeter fulfilling its mission of sparking a new franchise, especially with Paul Feig ‘s raucously larkish Spy to contend with.

International prospects will depend on audience familiarity with the original show — which at its peak was shown in 60 countries, sometimes under the title MI-5 — while the prominent presence of Kit Harington may draw in some fans of his broodingly vengeful Game of Thrones character Jon Snow. That said, Harington’s debut starring vehicle — Paul W S Anderson ‘s Pompeii — proved less than explosive last year, and Spooks is more revealing of his limitations than his potential. British bookmakers are currently offering 33/1 against Harington becoming the next 007, odds which most punters will have little difficulty resisting.

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Relatively diminutive, slight and with his Thrones locks —  he’s contractually obliged to retain the Snow ‘do — incongruously intact, he makes for a sullenly humorless presence here as hot-headed former MI-5 agent Will Holloway, who gets back in the game when terrorist Adem Qasim ( Elyes Gabel ) escapes captivity and threatens London with a 7/7-style atrocity. While an entirely new creation, Holloway combines elements of two previous Spooks favorites: future Hobbit notable Richard Armitage ‘s Lucas North and Matthew McFadyen ‘s Tom Quinn. From its earliest episodes Spooks (a Brit-speak epithet for spies) was notorious for dispatching key sympathetic characters — including Danny Hunter, the breakthrough part for Selma ‘s David Oyelowo — and North was one of many to meet a sticky end.

But there were exceptions, including McFadyen’s Quinn — who enjoyed a killer cameo in the final episode — and Firth’s Pearce, who uniquely appeared in all 86 episodes and slowly emerged as the show’s main draw. It’s great to see Firth granted a rare leading role at age 61 here — four decades after he earned Tony and Oscar nominations for Broadway and film versions of Equus — as Pearce goes AWOL and underground in the wake of Qasim’s escape, leading his stuffed-shirt superiors to question his loyalties. But it’s also frustrating that he should also have to share the limelight with an undeserving young whippersnapper, especially when Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent (head writers on the last two seasons) could easily have found a way to bring back the charismatic Quinn.

As it is, they struggle to flesh Holloway out into three dimensions — the script is even peppered with derisive, hostage-to-fortune comments about his competence (“Harry was right about one thing: you’re not good enough!”) — and while the character of course comes up trumps in the final reel, that’s more than can be said for the performer or the picture as a whole.

Conceived as a British answer to 24 , but with extra real-world grit and downbeat-classy Tinker Tailor touches, the BAFTA-winning Spooks successfully dramatized security concerns in the wake of 9/11, often touching on dealings between MI-5 personnel and their CIA counterparts during the era of the “special relationship” between George W Bush and Tony Blair. The current Obama / Cameron epoch provides, for good or ill, a less dramatic backdrop — and the recurring sub-plot of thorny US-UK collaborations (“the Americans think MI-5 is a weak link… they withdraw their support, our entire intelligence apparatus will collapse”) never quite comes into focus.

Casting a couple of US actors might have helped — director Nalluri’s previous big-screen outing, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (2008), was a US-UK co-production which benefited from having Frances McDormand , Amy Adams and Lee Pace in leading roles. Among support-players here only Jennifer Ehle (as an imperturbable MI-5 bigwig) makes much impact, crisply channeling Meryl Streep via Margaret Sullavan with the snowy tremolo of her icily precise diction.

Nalluri , who handled the first two episodes of the first two Spooks seasons and came back for the very final pair, is ploddingly content to follow the Hollywood-approved template for action/espionage fare, without ever imparting much of his own flavor. Technical contributions likewise seldom threaten to bedazzle: cinematographer Hubert Taczanowski seeks to show off a range of London locales, with copious use of helicopter shots, but his visions of the capital lacks the panache of recent genre notables Welcome to the Punch , Redemption (aka Hummingbird ) or fellow small-screen transplant, The Sweeney .

Nick Love ‘s slam-bang Sweeney — like the Spooks movie — pivoted on the chemistry between a seen-it-all pro and a tearaway youngster, a format whose most sparkling recent iteration is Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman : The Secret Service . Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton , Kingsman ‘s fizzingly droll chutzpah can’t help but make Spooks: The Greater Good , for all Peter Firth’s ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.

Production companies: Kudos, Shine Cast: Peter Firth, Kit Harington , Jennifer Ehle , Tuppence Middleton, Elyes Gabel , Tim McInnerny , Lara Pulver , David Harewood Director: Bharat Nalluri Screenwriters: Jonathan Brackley , Sam Vincent Producers: Jane Featherstone , Stephen Garrett, Ollie Madden Co-producers: Jane Hooks, Robert Norris Cinematographer: Hubert Taczanowski Production designer: Simon Bowles Costume designer: Colleen Kelsall Editor: Jamie Pearson Composer: Dominic Lewis Casting: Reg Poerscout-Edgerton Sales: Pinewood Pictures, London

No Rating, 104 minutes .

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Spooks: The Greater Good Review

08 May 2015

104 minutes

Spooks: The Greater Good

From the Hammer Quatermass films of the 1950s through to macho spin-offs like the Callan and Sweeney movies of the 1970s, there was once a strong tradition of bringing British TV hits to the big screen. Outside of comedy, which has yielded everything from On The Buses and Dad’s Army to Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie, the form has tailed off lately... so this film follow-up to the ten-season BBC One post-millennial spy show is at once a pleasant revival of an old tradition and its reinvention for a new age. If it posts decent figures, expect cinema versions of Doctor Who, Sherlock, New Tricks, Downton Abbey, Call The Midwife and EastEnders.

The format of the original series allowed for a high turnover of cast as MI5 agents were introduced, subjected to a season or two of trauma and betrayal then killed off or written out. This means that unlike most TV spin-offs, the Spooks movie can’t rely on the proven appeal of a star cast in their popular roles — among the regulars over the years have been David Oyelowo, Keeley Hawes, Matthew Macfadyen, Shauna Macdonald, Jenny Agutter, Sophia Myles, Richard Armitage and Rupert Penry-Jones, all busy elsewhere these days. By default, the script has to revolve around the sole continuing, surviving character, Peter Firth’s Sir Harry Pearce, who is basically George Smiley with a smartphone.

This might seem like extending the 007 franchise with a movie about M’s day off, but it’s actually the film’s strongest suit. Firth, given a leading role and top billing, flashes the slow-burning charisma he’s had ever since ’70s TV show Here Come The Double Deckers!, while Pearce goes off the grid and improvises trickery and connivance on a hugely complex level to protect Queen and Country at any cost.

The downside is that newcomers have a hard time keeping up. Tim McInnerny (one of a few other performers reprising TV roles here), David Harewood and Jennifer Ehle are solid as backroom warriors, and Tuppence Middleton and Eleanor Matsuura bright sparks as new recruits. However, too much of the film boils down to Kit Harington and Elyes Gabel competing in their failure to sport proper beards. In theory the action-hero protagonist and the terrorist master villain, Harington and Gabel come across as sulky and ineffectual and the labyrinthine plot sidelines their clash in favour of a nebulous, hard-to-care-about conspiracy.

Transfer from small to big screen allows for great use of London locations, with The Shard or the London Eye popping up outside every office window or covert meeting spot and very deft runabouts at Heathrow Airport or on top of the National Theatre. Director Bharat Nalluri, an episodic TV professional whose eclectic film credits include Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day and The Crow: Salvation, stages boardroom confrontations, street escapes, fights and plot twists expertly, but The Greater Good doesn’t quite escape its small-scale origins... with a finale which takes place indoors, as if it were raining that day and they couldn’t play outside.

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Film Review: ‘Spooks: The Greater Good’

A game Kit Harington headlines this strained, superfluous spinoff from the once-popular BBC spy drama.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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“Undone by sentimentality,” grumbles a senior secret agent in “Spooks: The Greater Good,” having been foiled when a long-favored rendezvous location proves a trap. He might as well be talking about the film itself. A strained, superfluous spinoff from a globally popular, now-defunct BBC spy drama that was itself something of a nostalgia exercise, Bharat Nalluri’s chrome-colored thriller plays less as an organic extension of the series’ universe than an all-purpose genre piece nominally tailored to fit the “Spooks” franchise — not to mention the star quality of previously unaffiliated leading man Kit Harington . Nearly four years after the show’s exit from TV screens, existing fans may well deem this workaday return too late; for any uninitiated viewers, seeking a British twist on “Bourne” territory, it’s almost certainly too little.

Created by David Wolstencroft — who, perhaps tellingly, has no creative involvement here — “Spooks” was launched in 2002 and ran for an impressive ten seasons, operating as a kind of jauntier transatlantic response to the similarly themed U.S. sensation “24.” It lacked the latter’s beefy production values and structural pizzazz, but won a considerable fanbase by combining high-octane post-9/11 espionage with a line in quippy, distinctly British workplace humor. That balance may have been easier to maintain on the small screen. Blown up to fit the big one, “Spooks: The Greater Good” too often seems tonally non-committal and narratively under-powered, its odd segues into arch office infighting disrupting rather than informing the larger plot — the arc of which could otherwise be contained in a special episode.

With such previous cast members as Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes either unavailable or uninvited to the party, it’s left principally to Peter Firth to forge the connection between series and film. As Sir Harry Pearce, MI5’s terse, tight-jawed head of counter-terrorism, he’s not the most engaging choice of representative for the absent ensemble; allusions to an ex-g.f. killed in the line of duty will register with “Spooks” devotees, but are too cursory to carry much pathos in and of themselves. When, in an extended pre-credit sequence, generically ruthless Middle Eastern terrorist Qasim (Elyes Gabel, sporting a sporadic American accent) escapes from custody under Pearce’s watch, the veteran agent responds by leaving the service and faking his own suicide. No one falls for the ruse, least of all the viewer: “The Greater Good” isn’t letting go of its rusty heritage that casually.

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Fresh blood arrives in the form of Harington’s young, globe-trotting agent Will Holloway, a loose cannon (as if there’s any other kind) commissioned by MI5 brass to trace Pearce — on the basis of some dimly explained backstory involving Pearce and Will’s late father that falls outside the show’s history, and doesn’t greatly deepen either character. Plainly recruited to lend some teen appeal to a franchise that skewed older even at the height of its popularity — he must be the screen’s first gentleman spy to sport a hipster man-bun, for starters — the “Game of Thrones” star is actually a brightening presence, though his flushed charm and physical resourcefulness can’t quite induce auds to care about the overall chase. (As for the youth spy vote, kids are likelier to stick with Harington’s “Testament of Youth” co-star Taron Edgerton in “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”)

Still, Harington is a better-used newcomer to the Grid (“Spooks” parlance for the division’s secure offices) than the usually excellent Jennifer Ehle, who’s not just squandered but actively misdirected as an inscrutable MI5 chief. It’s hard to tell whether her croakily mannered line readings are meant to be as amusing as they are, though she’s not aiming for quite the level of fruit-loop eccentricity achieved by the film’s second-most prominent series returnee, Tim McInnerny — whose every utterance laces his suited bureau official with preening, perfumed malevolence. Even when delivered with flair, however, the dialogue itself has little. Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent, both formerly on the series’ writing team, have penned a script heavy on direct, televisual exposition and would-be zingers that seem to trip up on their own phrasing: “Just because your life hasn’t been worth a damn, don’t think for a moment we can’t make it less satisfactory,” says one character, perhaps less threateningly than intended.

Indian-born helmer Nalluri (whose last feature assignment was the markedly different puffball “Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day”) counts on the pic’s travel itinerary to keep it afloat through stretches of standard-issue storytelling: Characters skip briskly back and forth between London, Berlin and Moscow, made somewhat uniform by the consistent silver-blue tint of Hubert Taczanowski’s lensing. Tech contributions across the board are likewise capable but impersonal: Though the script, perhaps taking its cue from “Skyfall,” makes frequent reference to old-school espionage tactics (“Glad you remembered the umbrella drop!”), that retro impulse hasn’t penetrated the film’s formal design. Here, at least, a little sentimentality wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, May 5, 2015. Running time: 102 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Pinewood Pictures, Isle of Man Films presentation of a Kudos, Shine Pictures production in association with BBC Creative England, Altitude Film Entertainment. (International sales: Altitude, London.) Produced by Ollie Madden, Jane Featherstone, Stephen Garrett. Executive producers, Steve Christian, Ivan Dunleavy, Richard Holmes. Co-producer, Jane Hooks.
• Crew: Directed by Bharat Nalluri. Screenplay, Sam Vincent, Jonathan Brackley, based on the television series created by David Wolstencroft. Camera (color, widescreen), Hubert Taczanowski; editor, Jamie Pearson; music, Dominic Lewis; music supervisor, Danny Layton; production designer, Simon Bowles; art directors, Andrew Munro, Karl Probert, Justin Warburton-Brown; set decorator, Liz Griffiths; costume designer, Colleen Kelsall; sound, Dan Voigt; supervising sound editor, Simon Chase; re-recording mixers, Brendan Nicholson, Andrew Caller; visual effects supervisor, Sascha Fromeyer; visual effects, LenscareFX; stunt coordinator, Julian Spencer; line producer, Andy Noble; assistant director, Stuart Renfrew; second unit camera, Malcolm Maclean; casting, Reg Poerscout-Edgerton.
• With: Kit Harington, Peter Firth, Jennifer Ehle, Tim McInnerny, Elyes Gabel, Tuppence Middleton, Eleanor Matsuura, Lara Pulver, David Harewood, Michael Wildman.

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Spooks: The Greater Good, movie review: Kit Harington and Peter Firth leap to the big screen at a ripping pace

(15) bharat nalluri, 104 mins. starring: kit harington, peter firth, jennifer ehle, article bookmarked.

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For all its references to hacking and computer surveillance, its high-tech listening devices and gadgetry, the big-screen spin-off from TV's Spooks is an old-fashioned affair – a ripping yarn with more than a hint of John Buchan about it.

Production values, at least compared with Bourne or Bond movies, are modest. Many of the spies look like provincial bank managers or jobbing civil servants. There is a sense that this is a film aimed primarily at British audiences who have a passing acquaintance with the TV show. At times, it seems stranded in a no man's land between 007-style thrills and George Smiley-like spycraft. The very British eccentricity is part of the appeal.

You can't help but admire the diligence with which the director, Bharat Nalluri, shows off his London locations. We are whisked from Heathrow to Waterloo Bridge, from the West End to Whitehall. No opportunity is lost for high-angle shots of the city and for panoramas of its historic buildings and skyscrapers.

Kit Harington plays Will Holloway, a character roughly similar to his "bastard" Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. He is both part of the Great British spy family and an outsider, forced out of the services in murky circumstances. Nonetheless, when a high-value terrorist, Qasim (Elyes Gabel), is sprung from captivity, Holloway is brought in from the cold to try to get him back.

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As in the best spy films, we aren't quite sure which side the spooks are on, whether they are trying to do "good" or to do "well" and further their careers. There is a stirring turn from Peter Firth, who appeared in every episode of the series, as spy chief Sir Harry Pearce, who suspects there may be something rotten at the heart of British intelligence. Jennifer Ehle is good value as his enigmatic colleague. What matters most, though, are the chases, explosions, bluffs and double crosses, all staged at such a relentless tempo there is no time to notice the cracks in the storyline.

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Spooks: The Greater Good review

More trouble with harry....

GamesRadar+ Verdict

It doesn’t exactly soar and the lack of levity grates, yet the Spooks movie still delivers some appealingly old-school mayhem to pass the time while we’re waiting on SPECTRE.

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

“You can do good or you can do well,” sighs MI5 operative Will Holloway (Kit Harington) in the long-gestating film version of the BBC’s resolutely downbeat drama. Seasoned TV director Bharat Nalluri brings a brisk professionalism to a twisty tale whose bleak take on the spy game is carried over from the original series virtually intact.

The same could be said of intelligence chief Harry Pearce (Peter Firth), as grimly sardonic as ever. Until, that is, a terrorist handover goes tits up, prompting him to jump off a bridge.

Can Will locate AWOL havoc-causer Adem Qasim (Elyes Gabel), solve the mystery of Harry’s disappearance and ferret out a mole before Section D gets shut down for good? Not without a lot of frantic running about London landmarks, shot by Hubert Taczanowski with a gleaming, silvery sheen.

Its relentless po-facedness invites an element of ridicule that The Greater Good, with limited resources and a seemingly endless series of treacherous double-crosses, isn’t wholly equipped to defend against.

You certainly won’t see more furrowed brows this year than in the scenes set in ‘The Grid’, one of those hi-tech HQs that want for nothing bar a decent light bulb. Add a few quips next time, though, and we might be talking franchise.

Neil Smith is a freelance film critic who has written for several publications, including Total Film. His bylines can be found at the BBC, Film 4 Independent, Uncut Magazine, SFX Magazine, Heat Magazine, Popcorn, and more. 

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Spooks: The Greater Good

Release date

8 th May 2015

After ten hugely successful seasons, the BBC original drama  Spooks  returns, this time hitting the big screen with the help of Kit Harington. Spooks:  The Greater Good opens up with Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) facing a new crisis: a terrorist has escaped from MI5 custody during a handover. Blamed for this failure, Harry is forced to resign as a head of counter-terrorism. With nothing else to lose and suspecting a breach at the highest levels of MI5, he disappears and decides to handle the situation in his own terms. Meanwhile, Will (Kit Harington), a young former agent, is brought back to find Harry and turn him in. However, he is soon facing the choice between helping Harry in his mission to find the traitor within the British intelligence, or to keep following the orders of this same organisation.

Fans of the series will be happy to see the return of Spooks;  it looks just as good on the big screen, having saved its signature cinematography and storytelling style, while the scale is brought up a notch. However, it does work well as a standalone British thriller, too, as little back story is needed to understand the plot. All in all, Spooks: The Greater Good does justice to the original television drama, as a gripping, well-made thriller that sees Peter Firth back in action. The truth is, not many series succeed once they make it to the big screen – this one does it right.

Lyubomira Kirilova

Spooks: The Greater Good is released nationwide on 8 th May 2015.

Watch the trailer for  Spooks: The Greater Good  here:

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Spooks: The Greater Good review: mid-ranking spy stuff

Competent cinema sequel to bbc spy series struggles to break out of its comfort zone.

Sorry? What now? It's been a full four years since Spooks , the popular BBC spy series, spluttered to a halt. Encountering a straight-up sequel in cinemas is akin to meeting a big-screen take on Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? In the interim, Game of Thrones has swollen into a phenomenon and, thus, Kit Harington, threatening breakout from Westeros, ends up being more of a selling point than surviving members of the Spooks cast. All very peculiar.

The film passes the time perfectly tolerably, but it is no more comfortable in this less intimate medium than were ancient movie versions of The Sweeney and Callan . Events kick off with the decently staged springing of a dangerous terrorist from heavily guarded detention in rainy London. The villain is, of course, tied up with all sorts of apocalyptic mischief and his release spreads chaos through the service. Big cheese Colin Firth goes missing and Harington is dragged from the shadows to put the pieces back together.

Enthusiasts for the genre will be delighted to hear that the phrase "What happened in Berlin?" is both bellowed and whispered at regular intervals. No spy film should be released without those words being uttered. Spooks aficionados will, however, be slightly frustrated that the show's characters are forced into the background. At the administration level, we hear a great deal of Jennifer Ehle speaking tensely as if trying to remain calm while passing a kidney stone. Harington is by far the busiest man on the shop floor.

Still, as mid-ranking spy stuff goes, The Greater Good is pretty nippy. It certainly works well as a London travelogue. There's the Shard. Here's The London Eye. An assassin even gets to take a shot from the balcony of the National Theatre. Keep it down, mate. The matinee's about to start.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist

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Spooks: The Greater Good

• 3 out of 5 stars
• Recommended

Time Out says

After ten series on the BBC, Peter Firth’s MI5 crew get their own big-screen adventure, putting themselves in competition with the likes of the ‘Bourne’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchises. That’s quite an ask, given the relatively modest resources available for this homegrown production. But then the TV series always gave as much weight to gnarly moral decisions and furrowed personal histories as to its compact action set pieces. We get the same mix here too, as beady-eyed boss Firth goes AWOL when terrorist leader Elyes Gabel is sprung from MI5’s grasp. Decommissioned officer Will Holloway’s (Kit Harington, see interview opposite) family connections make him the man to collar both of them before the deadly revolutionaries mount an attack on London.

Harington is likeable and agile enough to carry off the action-man role, but the film’s main frissons come from a startling willingness to dispose of seemingly major characters. Overall, excitement levels are moderate. But even if the film can’t match Hollywood for spectacle, there’s a sobering sense of the painful sacrifices and compromises facing those who toil in secret to keep us safe from harm.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 8 May 2015
• Duration: 104 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Bharat Nalluri
• Screenwriter: Jonathan Brackley, Sam Vincent
• Kit Harington
• Jennifer Ehle
• Elyes Gabel

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TV Listings

• Cast & Crew

Spooks: The Greater Good

• 47   Metascore
• 1 hr 44 mins
• Drama, Suspense, Action & Adventure

In this thrilling spy film, Will Holloway, a former MI-5 agent, is forced to partner with Harry Pearce, the man decommissioned him, to apprehend a terrorist who escaped during routine prisoner transport and prevent an attack on the city of London. Based on a British televison series "Spooks."

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1:32 Spooks: The Greater Good

Cast & Crew See All

Kit Harington

Will holloway.

Peter Firth

Harry pearce.

Jennifer Ehle

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Netflix movie of the day: Shrek is so good we'll almost forgive Mike Myers' truly terrible Scots accent

A fter what feels like about thirty sequels it's sometimes easy to forget that the original Shrek movie was a breath of fresh air – well, as fresh as you're gonna get in a swamp. It set a template that's informed all kinds of animations since with its mix of kid-delighting gross-out gags, more edgy jokes for the grown-ups and a wholly irreverent attitude that saw it taking pot-shots at a certain movie studio and theme park provider. 

Even year later it's still a very funny film for viewers of any age. It's so good, in fact, that your writer, a Scot born and bred, is willing to overlook Mike Myers' dreadful attempt at a Scottish accent.

• Watch Shrek on Netflix

Is Shrek worth streaming?

It is. Myers' grumpy swamp-dweller is a wonderful comic character, Eddie Murphy as his constantly chattering sidekick Donkey is just on the right side of extremely irritating, and Cameron Diaz is enchanting as Princess Fiona, a royal who's keeping a very big secret. It's packed with almost as many gags as an Airplane! movie and there's a really sweet message about self-acceptance that's delivered rather well without spoiling any of the over-the-top fun. And it has tons of fun mocking fairytale tropes, which it does mercilessly. As Bitch Media says, "turning the fairy-tale genre on its head was a clever, if not totally novel, notion at the time, and Shrek still retains much of its ironic charm 20 years later."

Total Film said that "there's no denying that the monster-as-hero device has 90-odd-minutes worth of entertainment mileage, and the delivery of the story's moral is handled well enough to avoid tweeness". And the Radio Times said: "This animated fantasy comedy from DreamWorks is an irreverent, occasionally scatological fairy tale with state-of-the-art computer-generated images that almost steal a march on Toy Story ."

Writing in the UK's Daily Telegraph , novelist Andrew O'Hagan said: "Here is a movie of the times, funny, enjoyable, perfect-looking, and altogether original in a way that might cause us to look again at the meaning of the word." And the London Evening Standard's Andrew Walker said that " Shrek is alive, and with dark, sly and absolutely hilarious irreverence lampooning every once-sacred characteristic of the nursery kingdom." The movie is "a subversive joy."

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